What We’re Reading
Preeti Aroon: “Shanghai Dream,” by Brook Larmer in National Geographic. As the author states, “The rise of China’s only truly global city … is driven not by machines but by an urban culture that follows its own beat — embracing the new and the foreign even as it seeks to reclaim its past glory.” Elizabeth ...
Preeti Aroon: “Shanghai Dream,” by Brook Larmer in National Geographic. As the author states, “The rise of China's only truly global city … is driven not by machines but by an urban culture that follows its own beat -- embracing the new and the foreign even as it seeks to reclaim its past glory.”
Preeti Aroon: “Shanghai Dream,” by Brook Larmer in National Geographic. As the author states, “The rise of China’s only truly global city … is driven not by machines but by an urban culture that follows its own beat — embracing the new and the foreign even as it seeks to reclaim its past glory.”
Elizabeth Dickinson: Susan Orlean writes about mules in the modern military in The New Yorker. A truly odd and fascinating story about how the United States airlifted the beasts to Pakistan to aid the mujahedeen … and rescued the mule industry in Tennessee in the process.
Joshua Keating: Under the Glacier, by Haldor Laxness. Since visiting Iceland last summer I’ve been meaning to check out Laxness, the country’s most famous author and winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature. This story of the very strange behavior of people living on the Snaefellsnes peninsula — one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been — seemed like a good place to start.
David Kenner: Of course, news about the arrest of Mullah Baradur is high on everyone’s list: I particularly enjoyed Steve Coll’s blog post on the subject. I’m also following the inimitable Laura Rozen’s reporting on the imminent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program, which is, of course, coming in the wake of Iran’s recent announcement that it was enriching its supply of uranium to 20 percent. In the oft-self-described capital of Arab culture, I was also surprised to see that one-third of Egyptian males between 15 and 29 years of age want to immigrate to a foreign country .
Christina Larson: In 1990 British dramatist Caryl Churchill’s "Mad Forest" imagined, darkly, how Romanians who had spent their lifetimes crusading against their Communist government would fare once their overlords fell. Absent the clear distinctions between good and evil, how would these moral warriors adapt to life under capitalism? It was perhaps an overly literary take on a topic that required a historian’s work collecting data about income shifts and new career paths, etc. Now East German documentarians are beginning to do just that, as Jess Smee recounts in Der Spiegel.
Andrew Swift: I’ve recently started a gifted copy of How Soccer Explains the World by New Republic editor Franklin Foer. With the most important sporting event on the planet only a few months away there’s no better time to make a sincere effort to understand the sport that is most watched, played, and obsessed the world over. A compelling weaving of the political, cultural and social issues surrounding the world of Football, Foer’s book is a great insight into the beautiful game.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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