Does the world really need another treatise on teen angst? Another attempt to capture the suburban despair and disillusionment of our nation's most overprivileged generation? (One not that far removed from my own.) These days, real life is filled with enough of our own self-absorbed, self-entitled bellyaching. Do we really have to read about it in fiction as well?

After finishing "Like the Red Panda," and finding myself steadily sucked into the world of teenage protagonist and narrator Stella Parish, I've come to this conclusion: Yes, we do -- sometimes. This happens to be one of those times.

Seigel's humorous sense of the tribulations of high school -- phony friends, bad-boy boyfriends, parents who just don't understand -- makes this an entertaining read, but many lesser books and films cover the same turf. "Like the Red Panda" succeeds because it transcends cliché. Seigel's book is not teensploitation trash or a literary version of "Beverly Hills 90210." If you read this expecting twisting soap-opera story lines, you'll probably be disappointed.

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The rioting was sparked by a fight at a soccer match, but quickly tapped into deep Kurdish resentment over their status in Syria. Political protest of this nature is almost unheard of in a country known for dealing quickly and brutally with insurgents, and the protesters paid a steep price. About 30 people died, most of them Kurds, and hundreds were imprisoned.

But thanks in part to the Internet, even as Kurds in Syria were experiencing the familiar helplessness of an oppressed minority, their kin throughout the rest of the world were able to fight back -- mere hours after the unrest began. Through an increasingly sophisticated network of Kurdish Web sites, news of the clashes spread throughout the Kurdish diaspora to Kurdish population centers in Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland and Canada.

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This phenomenon is reasonably well-known to public health professionals and those who have followed the epidemic closely. But with all these black people dying of AIDS in America -- and with the world's attention increasingly focused on the disastrous spread of the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa -- why is the American public at large so unaware of the depth of the problem? Why aren't movies being made, actors making speeches, singers holding benefit concerts? Jacob Levenson's new book, "The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America," takes an important first step, documenting the history of the disease in the black community in a comprehensive and accessible way. Perhaps more important, it also dissects the nature of the silence that has hung over the black AIDS epidemic like a shroud.

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Of course, in a cheap sci-fi book, the main character's name would have to be something that sounds like a new brand of antidepressant medication -- and the story would be trite, gimmicky and shallow. Instead, "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" is a serious work of literature, written with a precision of language and a depth of feeling that doesn't simply belie the book's quirky premise, it transforms it, elevates it from what could have been just another clever idea to a profound meditation on life, love and the inevitability of growing old. This is similar, in a sense, to the way Nabokov's "Lolita" not only captured the sickness and desperation of a grown man's love for a little girl, but also transcended it, commenting on the perversion, the agony, that lies at the core of love itself.

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A decade and a half has gone by, and once again Morris is scandalizing Israel -- but this time in a totally different way. Now, even as he releases an updated version of his book, he is defending what with brutal honesty he describes as the "ethnic cleansing" that brought the Jewish state into existence. In a recent interview with the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Morris not only justified the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians from Israel, but also said that then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion failed in his task by not expelling all Arabs from the nascent Jewish state: "If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job."

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Unlike any of the show's characters, the people who live on Warren, who pray at its churches and mosques, are likely to speak in either language, and many of the women and girls cover their heads with hijabs, or scarves.

But these differences are exactly what attracted the people of Sesame Workshop to the area. Three months ago founders of the famous children's show proposed a new program called "Sesame Neighborhood." It would take place in South Dearborn, off Warren, and provide an inside look at the life of a community that boasts a population estimated at anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 people of Middle Eastern descent. The goal was to produce five half-hour shows that would be available for syndication on Public Television stations across the country.

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How times have changed. Today, Yacef is an Algerian senator. "The Battle of Algiers" -- which has long been a cult classic, a favorite of professors of postcolonialism and your typical revolutionary types -- is recommended viewing for officials at the Pentagon, which held a private screening of the film in August. Officials described it as an illustration of "how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas." As former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told an audience in October, "If you want to understand what's happening right now in Iraq, I recommend 'The Battle of Algiers.'"

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No matter what they say, every word they speak shouts it over and over again: "I am an Arab."

Pictures from their childhoods flash across the screen, photos of parents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. Their relatives' hair is black and thick, their skin the color of olives, their eyes as brown as well-oiled wood. The men and their families would blend in perfectly in any marketplace in Cairo or Beirut -- or even Baghdad.

In fact, just 50 years ago, they did. Each of the men is not an Arab, but a Jew. Or, if you were to ask them, both Arab and Jew at the same time. Iraqi and Israeli, all at once. The former country is their homeland, the latter country their home, or the closest thing to it.

This seeming paradox of identity is exactly what drew the documentary filmmaker Samir to the stories of these Arab-Jewish-Iraqi-Israelis in his film, "Forget Baghdad," now playing at the Cinema Village in New York and scheduled for a January opening in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

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But along with the newly captured Holy Land came hundreds of thousands of Arab residents, none of whom wanted to be part of Israel. In 1968, the Jewish mayor of the newly united Jerusalem thought he had found the perfect way to make his city and his country feel more inclusive -- a national beauty pageant that would feature both Arab and Jewish contestants. This is the story of one of those contestants -- a winner, some would say. This is the story of my aunt, the Queen of Jerusalem, Amelie Makhoul. She requested a pseudonym for herself and her sisters in this article, but no other facts have been altered.

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In the past 14 months, there have been a few weeks when no gay couples were featured -- which initially prompted some outcry from members of the gay community. But as gay wedding announcements have become a regularly occurring part of the paper -- at least 50 gay and lesbian couples have appeared in the pages so far -- those criticisms have faded.

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Sprinkled among all of those trips were sporadic stays in Portland, Ore. That gave Sacco just enough time to write and draw, to parlay his many journeys into award-winning books like "Palestine" and "Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995," and in the process to become one of the most critically acclaimed and successful graphic novelists of his generation. Not long ago, that distinction wouldn't have meant much. Comic books were considered kid stuff, and graphic novels were a fringe movement. But with the increasing popularity of works like Art Spiegelman's "Maus" -- a graphic rendering of the Holocaust -- and the profoundly mundane "American Splendor," written by Harvey Pekar with various illustrators, graphic novels have become a respected art form, even a literary phenomenon.

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Thirty-nine days. Just a footnote, really, in a history of Palestinian and Israeli grievances and countergrievances that spans more than three years since the start of the al-Aqsa intifada, more than 50 years since the founding of Israel, more than a century since the first Zionists came from Russia to settle in the Holy Land.

Yet there was something about the siege that makes it just as relevant now as it was the day it was finally resolved. It was a microcosm for years of struggle that unfolded in real time as we watched on television or followed it in the newspapers. Very rarely does such a brief moment seem to embody so completely the overwhelming scope of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even rarer is the book that, by helping us to understand the minute dynamics of an event like the siege, actually expands our understanding of the forces that drive the conflict as a whole.

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Aida Touma Suliman is on the front lines of this struggle. Eleven years ago, Suliman -- a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship -- and six other women founded the organization Women Against Violence in her hometown of Nazareth. Suliman, a 39-year-old married mother of two daughters, was raised Christian, but now considers herself atheist. Her shoulder-length curly black hair hangs down to her shoulders, and she dresses in stylish clothes that would look natural on the streets of Paris, New York or London.

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In a dramatic on-air confession to his fans and critics, Limbaugh said during the last 10 minutes of his radio program that at least some of the media accounts of his drug problems were true. "You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life," he said, the tone of his voice growing somber and reflective but never wavering. "So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication." He said he would "immediately" enter rehab for 30 days, asked listeners "for your prayers," and said he looked forward to breaking the chains of addiction. Then, deviating from his script, which was simultaneously sent to news outlets -- he said, "It'll never be over."

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While growing up, Kates enjoyed trips to the public library to check out her favorite books. Sbaihat, on the other hand, spent much of his childhood playing a strange version of hide-and-seek with Israeli soldiers -- they tried to throw him in jail, he tried to throw rocks at their heads.

Kates' father is a truck driver, her mother is a bank teller and her brother is a U.S. marshal. Sbaihat's father and uncles have all done time in Israeli prisons for civil unrest, and his religious Muslim mother will only leave the house if wearing a scarf on her head.

Kates speaks English with a typical East Coast twang. Sbaihat still rolls his R's a little bit, and his H's come from somewhere deep in his Semitic throat.

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"Do you wanna see the Dalai Lama?" Rachel asked.

"Uh," Sara mumbled, "I don't know."

Rachel had spent much of Saturday night in a weed-induced philosophical frenzy, raving on and on to her friends about the history of communist China and Mao and the imperialist takeover of Tibet and all the other kinds of good, deep stuff that third-year Columbia students like herself are supposed to be passionate about. Rachel wasn't about to let her sister sleep through ... this.

"It's the Dalai-fuckin'-Lama, man!" she yelled at Sara.

So just after 10 a.m. they grabbed a couple of friends and piled into a cab and headed down to the park entrance on East 90th Street. Except that the line to get in already snaked down the avenue and into the 70s, before whipping back up until it finally ended at 96th Street, which is where I find them when I arrive after 11.

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"I always remember we prayed before every meal, but not after meals," he said. "Once as a kid that got me upset, because the nun said you're supposed to pray before and after."

He even wanted to enter the seminary before he began high school, but his father and mother couldn't afford it.

Given his traditional tendencies, it may come as something of a surprise that Aufdermauer is one of three Milwaukee priests who recently sparked a fiery debate in American Catholic thought and theology: Should the church force celibacy on all priests? Aufdermauer and 168 other local pastors who signed his petition say no, and they cite statistics to support their claim: According to the Catholic University of America, for every 100 priests who die or leave the church, only 30 or 40 replace them. Unless the church changes its policy, the Milwaukee priests argue, in a matter of years the Catholic priesthood in America might become an endangered species.

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