Introduction and Comments

Extract

Only connect….” E. M. Forster's admonition in Howards End resonates with this issue of Perspectives on Politics in several ways. The connection that Forster pushes most insistently is “building … the … bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion.” Writing, reviewing, and editing an article for Perspectives is mostly about the prose. But the sorts of articles that belong in Perspectives have a passion—for politics, for inquiry, for a particular population or problem or region of the world—not too far below the surface. The trick, of course, is to use the passion to inspire, but not to control, the prose.