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From the June 9, 2011 issue

Storm Over Syria

Malise Ruthven

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Louai Beshara/Getty Images

How did Syria come to this pass? The regime’s violence is not ideological. It is far from being the result of a commitment to a party that long ago abandoned secular Arab republican values and aspirations. The ruthless attachment to power lies in a complex web of tribal loyalties underpinned by a unique religious bond. The dominance of the Alawis—the highly secretive sect who make up only 12 percent of the population—may be attributed to their highland military background and the default logic by which ‘asabiyya—variously translated as clannism and group solidarity—tends to assert itself in the absence of other more durable structures.

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Havana: The State Retreats

José Manuel Prieto, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen

On my first visit to Cuba in ten years, I had the chance to observe the first signs of the dismantling of this gigantic state, visibly in retreat. I saw the detritus left behind: the disaster of a dysfunctional economy and a deep financial crisis aggravated by a dual currency system. All amid the growing discontent of the population and surging dissidence.

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From the Archive: April 9, 2009

The Bob Marley Story

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Bob Marley died of cancer on May 11, 1981, at the premature age of thirty-six. By then he was well known to college kids worldwide, but few could have foreseen the celebrity he has attained since. Born in Jamaica, he is the only third-world performer to be elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1999, the BBC named his “One Love” the “Song of the Millennium”; the same year Time declared his 1977 Exodus the “Best Album of the Twentieth Century.” Voted the third-greatest songwriter of all time in a 2001 BBC poll (behind Bob Dylan and John Lennon), Marley has sold an estimated 50 million records worldwide. On the 2007 Forbes list of “Top-Earning Dead Celebrities,” he ranked twelfth, with his estate earning an estimated $4 million. His posthumous greatest-hits collection, Legend (1984), is among the top-selling compilations of all time. Twenty-seven years after his death, there is perhaps no country where his songs—wry ballads and martial anthems, with soothing or stirring melodies—aren’t familiar.

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Exchange

‘All Things Shining’: An Exchange

Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, reply by Garry Wills

Our book, All Things Shining, has clearly touched a nerve. Prominent reviewers have found it transformative. They have called it “fascinating,” “stunning,” “illuminating,” “inspirational,” and even a “harbinger of future philosophies to come.” But others have been outraged and dismissive. Garry Wills, the eminent historian and distinguished defender of the Catholic faith, now bears the standard for those arguing against.

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