What We’re Reading
Henry Bowles Bank Robbers, by Joshua Kurlantzick at The New Republic Online. Kurlantzick warns of an emerging group of donor states whose lending practices (call it “rogue aid“) may force the World Bank into a race to the bottom in terms of the transparency, austerity, and environmental standards to which aid recipients are held. Mike ...
Henry Bowles
- Bank Robbers, by Joshua Kurlantzick at The New Republic Online. Kurlantzick warns of an emerging group of donor states whose lending practices (call it “rogue aid“) may force the World Bank into a race to the bottom in terms of the transparency, austerity, and environmental standards to which aid recipients are held.
Mike Boyer
- Iran v. Britain: Who Blinked? by Francis Fukuyama. Pundits such as Charles Krauthammer and John Bolton charged that Britain capitulated to Iran. Actually, it’s the other way around.
Christine Chen
- Pearls Before Breakfast, by Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Magazine, April 8, 2007. Can beauty be measured, or is it only in the eye of the beholder? Joshua Bell, one of the top classical violinists in the world, threw on some jeans and a baseball cap, took his $3.5 million Stradivarius to the Washington, DC Metro, and busked the morning rush hour. Hardly anyone stopped, and only one person recognized him. He made just $32.17 in 43 minutes.
Michael Cognato
- Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. John Pomfret, now at the Washington Post, studied at Nanjing University with the first class to enter school after the Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s, and has frequently returned to China since then. In Chinese Lessons, he traces the story of five of his classmates, from their past suffering to today’s successes, and in the process fills in crucial details of what’s lying behind all those headlines about a rising China.
Prerna Mankad
- “Serious Money” in Vanity Fair, May 2007 (not available online). Michael Wolff explains how private equity works, why it’s so lucrative, who the big players are, where it’s headed—and why he wants in.
Carolyn O’Hara
- Millions without a place to call their own, International Herald Tribune. An incredible photo essay by Greg Constantine about the world’s citizens of nowhere.
- The Typing Life, by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker. How writers used to write, told through the short history of the typewriter.
More from Foreign Policy
At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment
Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.
How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China
As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.
What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal
Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.
Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust
Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
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