What We’re Reading

Preeti Aroon

• “Ukraine Remembers Famine Horror,” by Laura Sheeter on BBC News. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the “Holomodor,” the Stalin-devised famine that is thought to have killed at least 3 million people in Ukraine. The country has officially declared it a genocide, but some in Russia object to that term.

Christine Chen

• To End a War. Richard Holbrooke’s memoir of negotiating an end to the war in the Balkans is one of the best books out there on modern diplomacy. Wonder if Condi read it in advance of Annapolis?

Blake Hounshell

• Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth, by the good folks at The Onion. In which we learn that “Yemen is home to terrorists who are neither smart enough to come up with evil plots nor brave enough to carry them out” and that “there is something in Costa Rica for every nouveau riche environmentalist from the U.S.”

Prerna Mankad

• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. From Switzerland to Bhutan, veteran NPR correspondent Eric Weiner takes readers on a journey to ten of the world’s happiest countries in a quest to find out what makes the people living in them so blissful.

Carolyn O’Hara

• Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, by Rosemary Mahoney. Mahoney, who also wrote the excellent Whoredom in Kimmage, delivers a page-turning travelogue about her dream of rowing the Nile alone.

Kate Palmer

• Ahead of the Annapolis Middle East peace summit this week, a few backgrounders: “The Real Two-State Solution,” by Aluf Benn, Salon.com. (Why Bush is too late). “To Annapolis—Without Illusions,” by Shlomo Avineri, Ha’aretz (What Israelis are expecting in Maryland). “Short on Peace, Long on Process,” Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera (Why the talks are a distraction from Iraq). And “Key Topics, Major Players,” Wall Street Journal (A rundown of who’s who and what’s at stake at Annapolis).