What We’re Reading

Elizabeth Allen

Those interested in Darfur should check out this profile of the lead prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, from the World Affairs journal. The article’s authors, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, go behind the scenes to explore the politics (and political jockeying) of Ocampo’s legal pursuits, including the case brought against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, including quotes from FP‘s recent interview of Ocampo.

Preeti Aroon

China High: My Fast Times in the 010 — A Beijing Memoir, by ZZ. This book is a testosterone-charged memoir written by a Chinese-born, U.S.-educated, Beijing-based lawyer/entrepreneur known simply as ZZ. The tale is filled with sex, drugs, motorcycles, nightclubs, and scandalous Mandarin cuss words.

Elizabeth Dickinson

Writing in the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman (a recent FP author) reviews Gerard Prunier’s Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the making of a continental catastrophe. Prunier is one of the Congo’s longest and most astute observers. Tracing the continent’s most devastating conflict — which has left more dead than any war since WWII — his task is daunting. But I, for one, will be reading. 

Rebecca Frankel

In the Weekly Standard, Harvey Mansfield wonders: In a global recession, is the overly predicted life worth living? It is a well-timed question. Mansfield argues that “in the present financial crisis” it’s the economists who have “so far escaped notice.” Perhaps it’s high time we “abandon the crude positivism that claims that one can study facts without giving advice, or that one can confidently predict without causing people to believe in one’s predictions.”

Greg Shtraks

According to Yasheng Huang, democracies are “peaceful, representative — and terrible at boosting an economy.” In his article for FP last year, Huang argued that the economic part of this hypothesis does not apply to today’s India. But what if the inverse of this theory is true? In an editorial for The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan explores Narendra Modi, a rising star in the “Hindu-chauvinist” Bharatiya Janata Party and chief minister of the province of Gujarat, the economic powerhouse of northwest India.

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