What We’re Reading

Preeti Aroon

“A Reluctant Master of the Universe” in the Washington Post. Bryan Burrough reviews Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School, by Philip Delves Broughton, which the reviewer says should be renamed “Harvard B-School for Dummies.” Thinking about going to business school? You should probably read this book first.

Travis Daub

“U.S. Satellite Shootdown: The Inside Story,” by James Oberg in IEEE Spectrum. A behind-the-scenes look at the Pentagon’s decision to shoot down a failing U.S. satellite back in February reveals that it may not have been a veiled missile-defense test after all.

Patrick Fitzgerald

A Path Out of the Desert. I saw Brookings Middle East expert Kenneth Pollack talk about his book last month at Washington bookstore Politics and Prose, and loved this takeaway about American interests in the region: “The Middle East ain’t Vegas, what happens there doesn’t stay there.” Max Rodenbeck, Middle East correspondent for The Economist, is less enthused in his review for the New York Times, castigating Pollack’s “grand strategy” for “outdated” generalizations and “a shaky grasp of history.” Ouch.

Blake Hounshell

“Driven: Shai Agassi’s Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road,” by Daniel Roth in Wired. Although in some ways it’s a typical, breathless “this invention will change everything!” tech piece, Roth’s is by far the best in-depth look I’ve seen at the former SAP executive’s bid to turn Israel into a paradise for electric cars. Agassi had better come up with a much cooler name for his company than Better Place, however, if he ever wants to sell his ideas to a mass audience.

Joshua Keating

The Orwell Diaries. What if George Orwell had blogged? That’s the somewhat strange idea behind this project to post the one of the author’s diary entries from 1938 through 1942 every day, exactly 70 years after each one was written. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for insights into the great events of Orwell’s era, it’s pretty disapointing so far. He seems to have been almost exclusively focused on English plant life during the summer of ’38.