What We’re Reading

Henry Bowles

PAULA BRONSTEIN/Getty Images

• Mid-Point in the Middle East, in New Left Review. Tariq Ali’s sprawling essay considers the “balance sheet” of US policy throughout the Middle East. Predictably snarky and incisive at the same time, Ali cheers for the “debits” and provides some wonderful analyses of two stormy relationships—between Fatah and Hamas and between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian public.
• Anne Applebaum in Slate: Legalize It: How to Solve Afghanistan’s Drug Problem, She’s hardly the first to do so, but Applebaum makes a strong case for allowing the legal cultivation of the opium poppy as the solution to Afghanistan’s drug woes.

Christine Chen

• I Was a Child Soldier, by Ishmael Beah in the latest New York Times Magazine. A rare first-hand look at a phenomenon that’s sadly all too common in Africa.
• The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. While mourning the loss of her husband of 40 years, Didion thinks about what might have happened if she could turn back time. Kind of like when we think about the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Michael Cognato

• As a junior Hill staffer, I used to field calls pretty regularly from people convinced the government was controlling their thoughts. For her article Mind Games, Sharon Weinberger, writing for the Washington Post Magazine, decided to find out what makes them tick.

Blake Hounshell

• Here’s the latest
  from the Columbia professor who became semi-famous for studying the socioeconomics of dealing crack in Chicago: Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. I’m just hoping to get some tips on how to stretch my hard-earned FP salary.
  

Jeff Marn

• Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (2004) by Bradley K. Martin. Yeah, I’m a little late to this one. But Kim Jong Il’s still crazy.

Kate Palmer

• World Politics Watch, a (relatively) new Web site focusing on foreign policy and security issues, edited by former FP contributor Hampton Stephens.

Editor’s note: this feature normally goes out on Monday, but we waited until today because of the holiday yesterday. Next week we’ll be back on our usual schedule.