What We’re Reading
Back by popular demand is Passport‘s weekly feature, What We’re Reading. Thanks to all the readers who wrote in asking for WWR’s return. We’re counting on all of you to participate as well. Preeti Aroon: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Read this book, and you’ll ...
Back by popular demand is Passport's weekly feature, What We're Reading. Thanks to all the readers who wrote in asking for WWR's return. We're counting on all of you to participate as well.
Back by popular demand is Passport‘s weekly feature, What We’re Reading. Thanks to all the readers who wrote in asking for WWR’s return. We’re counting on all of you to participate as well.
Preeti Aroon: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Read this book, and you’ll be moved — and outraged. It tells the heartbreaking stories of girls who have been trafficked into brothels, women who have been gang-raped, and mothers who’ve died from lack of basic obstetric care. It’s unconscionable that women and girls are treated this way in the 21st century, and it’s holding back development in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Elizabeth Dickinson: Evan Osnos’ piece “Reds,” in the Food Issue of the New Yorker, is about as fascinating as they come. Tracing the story of how wine became “a thing” in China, Osnos ends up describing some of the smartest, craftiest foreign investors in that country today. So dramatic is market shift that even the French today are seeing China as a grapevine growth market.
Joshua Keating: David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East is, as advertised, a primer on the origins of today’s Middle Eastern conflicts. But it’s also a fascinating portrait of the mechanics of foreign policy-making at the tail end of the imperial era.
Christina Larson: Will the real climate watchdogs please stand up? In the past two years, a network of local and expat green-energy professionals has developed in Beijing. One of the more well-known characters, "Sustainable John," by day works in renewable energy and by night produces wacky videos about environmental issues in China. The latest, released over the weekend, gets down with Copenhagen.
Annie Lowrey: I’m coming back from vacation 650 pages into Stephen King’s 1000-page behemoth Under the Dome, about the provincial residents of a Maine town cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable dome. The book is fabulous, and King is the American Dickens.
Tell us what you’re reading — FP-related or not — in the comments.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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