Abstract
A universal linear-temperature dependence of the uniform magnetic susceptibility has been observed in the non-magnetic normal state of iron pnictides. This non-Pauli and non-Curie-Weiss-like paramagnetic behavior cannot be understood within a simple mean-field picture. We argue that it results from the existence of a wide antiferromagnetic fluctuation window in which the local spin-density-wave correlations exist but the global directional order has not been established yet.