What We’re Reading

Blake Hounshell

• A False Choice in Pakistan, by Daniel Markey in the current Foreign Affairs. The former State Department wonk argues that it’s possible to push for political reform in Pakistan without jeopardizing the Army’s “core interests.” (And here I was thinking that one of the Army’s core interests was forestalling political reform.)

Preeti Aroon

• Malaria: Bedlam in the Blood, by Michael Finkel in National Geographic. This year, half a billion people will get malaria, and more than a million will die from it. Finkel discusses the history of the disease and what’s being done to stop it.

Christine Chen

• Peeling the Onion, by Gunter Grass. The Nobel-prize winning author has written a controversial memoir about his youth as a member of the Waffen SS. Just as fascinating as the book have been the reviews. Last year, Christopher Hitchens pilloried Grass in Slate for having omitted his service for so many years. More recently, novelist John Irving wrote a bizarre piece in the New York Times Book Review, fiercely defending his friend, but not really talking about the book.

Carolyn O’Hara

• Members Only, by Angela Valdez in this week’s City Paper. A.K.A. Reason No. 5,204 why I don’t live in Georgetown. The only thing funnier than the piece itself, which profiles Late Night Shots, the ‘exclusive’ social network of recently graduated binge drinkers prowling M Street: the Wonkette thread in their honor.
• Chavez: From Hero to Tyrant, by Alice O’Keefe in the New Statesman. You know it’s bad for Chavez when he loses the love of Britain’s premier leftist weekly. 

Prerna Mankad

• The Croc Epidemic, by Meghan O’Rourke in Slate. How a heinous synthetic shoe managed to reel in $200 million in profits last year.

Erica Alini

• A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. A lovely novel about how two tailors, a widow, and a penniless student made it through social upheaval in 1975 India.