Welcome to our August issue – packed with good reading: reviews, commentary, new poetry, arts commentary. Few recent books have achieved such renown and influence as Thomas Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-first Century’; Mark Triffitt reviews it for us. We have reviews of new fiction by Gerald Murnane and Lorrie Moore; and biographies of Don Dunstan, George Herbert and Wilhelm II. Kevin Rabalais writes about ‘My Brother Jack’ on its fiftieth birthday. Finally, among our poets this month is soon-to-be-visiting UK poet Simon Armitage.