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This was expected, but still a huge blow. Noam (C) has just died. I will write about him at length but just to say that in a post Vietnam War world where dissent was gradually being restricted we missed Noam's voice in the New York Review of Books. He was not in the NYT that much anyway. Had he been based in London in the 80s 90s and early 2000's I have no doubt whatsoever that he would been writing regularly in The Guardian and interviewed on BBC Radio and TV. Now both sides of the Atlantic are very similar to each other. When we shared a platform, he would say 'I'll go first. If I speak after you they'll all go to sleep.' The never did, of course. They heard him in pin drop silence, except once we were speaking to a huge trade-union conference with simultaneous translation. Noam spoke first. After the event, sas we were walking off to dinner I said to him: 'Your translator was very boring. Most of these workers went to sleep. Thank God I was there to wake them up.' He laughed. In these last months he was greatly angered by the Israelis and the kicking fields and streets and beaches in Gaza. 'Israel should not exist' was an early reaction. Introducing him at a talk in Santa Fe many years ago I compared him to Bertrand Russell. Over supper he thanked me and said that was the nicest thing anyone could have said about him. 'I loved Russell and his picture was ever-present in my office.' Your picture, too, dear departed Noam will also be on many walls for a long time to come.