From National Journal, an article on how unity tickets have met bad ends. How Democrats can take back the South: Bob Moser, author of Blue Dixie, says don't give up on the region, but don't pander to it with Clintonian centrism (and a response by Thomas Schaller). We're Not All Friedmanites Now: Thomas Frank on the Milton Friedman Institute; and more and more on The Wrecking Crew. If conventions are so ridiculous, what's the one thing you would do to improve them? A review of Hollywood's Cold War by Tony Shaw. Hurricane Katrina wiped out the New Orleans public schools; it also created a rare chance to build a system that might solve the biggest problem in urban education: how to teach disadvantaged children. From The Atlantic Monthly, Caitlin Flanagan on how Patty Hearst’s kidnapping reflected and ravaged American culture in the 1970s; and Heart of Darwin: The places in and around London that shaped the naturalist as a young man. A review of Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination by Anthony Campbell. From PopMatters, a review of The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos by Robert Hieronimus and Laura Cortner. More on Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. Michael Dirda reviews Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari.