In his provocative new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman criticizes liberals for refusing to stand against Islamic extremism and defend Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Tunku Varadarajan speaks to him about why ideas still matter...

Dear Mr. Brin: Fifty years ago this week, when I was a 21-year-old college senior, I was in the Soviet Union, sent by the government of Israel to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union and could then be issued a formal invitation to Israel.

“Civilizations, empires, great powers, can fall apart very fast. Collapse can come suddenly, like a thief in the night. And we should be very wary of assuming that our civilization, the civilization of the early 21st century West, will oblige us by declining gradually.” That warning from noted historian Niall Ferguson is the opening and the theme of the vital new documentary The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West from filmmaker Gloria Z. Greenfield.

His reading list focuses on how liberty is won, lost, and neglected. By Jonathan Rauch.

For years, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri criticized Iran’s supreme leader and argued that the country was not the Islamic democracy it claimed to be, but his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. . . .

The Islamic Revolution first raised up, then cast down, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Homage to an uncorrupted man. By Abbas Milani.

Ousting an autocrat is only a start. The rules of power become just as important as who holds it. By Larry Diamond.

Drought may not be destiny, but a critical ingredient for democratic societies does seem literally to fall from the skies. By Stephen H. Haber and Victor Menaldo.

Iran’s two top leaders scheme. By Abbas Milani.