At Religion Dispatches, Yale English professor Caleb Smith answers ten questions about his new book, The Prison and the American Imagination.

In the Christian Science Monitor, Mark LeVine considers the significance of the recent Taliban bombing at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, and what it means for Islam.

Peter Steinfels comments on a new report released by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which claims to be "the most comprehensive analysis to date of global religious trends".

At U.S. Intellectual History, Tim Lacy reflects upon the abiding significance of the field. Lacy focuses his three-part discussion on a forum that appeared earlier this year in Historically Speaking. With contributions from such historians as Daniel Wickberg, David A. Hollinger, Sarah E. Igo, and Wilfred M. McClay, the forum covered issues ranging from the usefulness of intellectual metanarratives to pedagogy.

At the Christian Science Monitor, Nathan Gardels interviews Francis Fukuyama, who once controversially proclaimed that capitalist democracy would be "the end of history."

At First Things, Stefan McDaniel takes a stand against blogging.

Last night on The Colbert Report, Cornel West challenged Obama to step up his efforts to fight poverty in America.

In the National Review, Ryan Sayre Patrico reviews Eamon Duffy's new revisionist work, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor.