There were a couple of frustrating items on promising topics: one on how hunter-gatherers had it better, which we all know but probably also all love thinking about, but that had nothing new to say on the topic; one on accidental killers that was kind of ditto (but probably there is little art to be spun out of hitting a kid in your car in the confines of the form, hand it over to the right novelist instead, maybe a Clarice Lispector?), and one on the Kellogg–Briand pact that suggests it's to be credited for the drop in violence since the forties but doesn't really make a clear case why, and then a good one about the current North Korea situation that helps us understand just how it is that the two sides can know so little about each other, and a good story about an old lady with dementia who tries to drop her grandson off the balcony by Edwidge Danticat, and other things. ( )