Preeti Aroon: “The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World,” by Jack A. Goldstone in Foreign Affairs. In the coming years, it’s not the total world population that will matter so much, but its distribution and composition, as in: 1) a drop in the developed world’s population relative to the developing world’s, the aging populations in developed countries, the increase in undereducated, unemployed youth in developing (and in particular, Muslim) countries, and the booming of overcrowded megacities in the developing world.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Jeune Afrique released its list of the top 100 players of the year for African news late last week. The tally includes both familiar faces and new up-and-coming newsmakers. Presidents of South Africa, Senegal, Angola, and Cameroon make the list, as well as the next top bankers (like Yves Michel Fotso), communications entrepreneurs (take Marouane Mabrouk), and writers (Senegal’s Boubacar Boris Diop scores high).

Joshua Keating: "Obsessed with the Internet" by Christopher S. Stewart in Wired. Stewart uses the tragic death of a teenager at an internet addiction camp to look at how the supposed dangers of online gaming have become a national obsession in China, leading to the emergence of a small industry of poorly-regulated rehab facilities that use methods like forced marches, sedation, and electroshock therapy to cure young web addicts. 

Britt Peterson: Again, my entry this week is more aspirational than actual. I’m obsessed with the LRB personals, which I follow on Twitter while cackling outlandishly (random example from today: “‘Shame’ and ‘terror’. The words that most adequately sum up my sexual performances. If yours are ‘banter’ and ‘pot-roast’, write. F, 36.”). And there’s a new collection out next week, Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland , to follow up on their earlier collection, They Call Me Naughty Lola. I’m also working my way through VQR’s North Africa issue <> , including this gorgeous and painful story from Nigerian writer Helon Habila (subscription req.).

What are you reading?

Preeti Aroon: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. A precocious 12-year-old girl in Paris plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday, and the concierge of her apartment building spends hours reading about philosophy, in the English translation of this popular French book highlighted in the FP article, “Summer Reading of Our Discontent,” and turned into a movie last summer.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Stratfor’s Annual Forecast for 2010 just came out last week, with a few interesting conclusions. Among the highlights are a resurgent Russia, a United States bogged down in Afghanistan, and a new conflict in Africa: “Angola and South Africa have both matured as independent powers. Now begins their cold war.”

Joshua Keating: I'm not exactly sure why human organ markets are a hot topic this week, but it's certainly always an interesting subject. In the Wall Street Journal, Marginal Revolution co-blogger Alex Tabarrok looks at innovative solutions some countries are implementing to make up for organ shortages, ranging from preferential treatment given to donors in Israel, to financial incentives for donation in Iran. I'm also trying to track down a friend with a fancier cable package than me so I can watch Dan Rather report on the international black market for kidneys tomorrow. 

David Kenner: I’m reading Jay Solomon’s Wall Street Journal article reporting that the Obama administration is increasingly starting to question the viability of the Iranian regime, as it is presently constructed -- and is increasingly crafting policy with an eye toward helping the country’s nascent opposition movement. Also, via the inimitable Leah Farrall , I came across this West Point report, claiming that 85 percent of al Qaeda’s victims are Muslims. Finally, I note with interest the reports that prominent Wall Street investors are heading to Damascus to look into finance opportunities in this long-isolated Arab state. The investors were apparently particularly impressed with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his deputy Prime Minister for economic affairs, Abdullah al-Dardari. 

Christina Larson: Ian Buruma's essay in The Globe and Mail on how nationalism -- not Communism -- is "China's new orthodoxy." Also, scrutinizing Vanity Fair data regarding Warren Beatty's, er, extreme productivity.

Annie Lowrey: I just read Ethan Watters' piece in the New York Times Magazine on the export of American ideas about mental illness to other parts of the world. Apparently, the American understanding of psychological afflictions doesn't just change how conditions like anorexia are treated in other countries -- it changes how people express the illness. I'm looking forward to reading the whole book the article is excerpted from, as I'm interested in how much this has to do with the global saturation of American books, movies, and, especially, television shows like House and E.R, as opposed to the global saturation of, say, U.S. medical texts and techniques. Fascinating stuff.

Britt Peterson: I’m laughing over David Thomson’s evisceration of a book about Hollywood scandals past, including the rumor that Frank Sinatra’s secret to bedroom endurance was Wheaties, on my former employer The New Republic’s sharp new reviews site, The Book. Meanwhile, in Hollywood scandals present, Global Voices (via the NYT) has a round-up of Chinese bloggers responding to Eurocentric themes in Avatar: “I believe if Edward Said is still alive, when he sees that Jake is saved by the princess of Na’vi, he would think: this damn screenwriter!” 

Preeti Aroon: Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, the adventurous and intellectual Christopher McCandless spent the next two years mostly hitchhiking around the United States, living by his wits. In April 1992 he finally made it to Alaska to begin a “Great Adventure” of living alone in the wilderness. Four months later, his starved 67-pound body was discovered.

Blake Hounshell: The Myth of the Rational Market, by Justin Fox. In which we learn that Irving Fisher, the Yale professor who famously predicted that the 1920s stock-market boom would last forever, laid the intellectual groundwork for our latest Great Recession.

Joshua Keating: Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The story of how Josef Djugashvili rose from the streets of Gori, through a stint in seminary, and a brief career as a romantic poet to become a bank-robbing revolutionary and later one of history greatest tyrants is an amazing story on its own. Thanks to recently unearthed Soviet-era documents and Montefiore's formidable writing chops, it's a true tour-de-force.

Christina Larson: Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau chief Barbara Demick takes readers inside the Hermit Kingdom in her new book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Through extensive reporting drawn in part from multiple visits to the China-North Korea border, Demnick constructs what daily life is like for residents of the least free place on earth.

Annie Lowrey: A smattering of interesting articles tagged on Delicious and finally read recently or today: Matt Labash's delightful profile of Marion Barry in The Weekly Standard, S. Frederick Starr's clear-eyed academic look at Central Asiain The Wilson Quarterly, Mark Lynas' thrown-bomb on China's intransigence on climate change at Copenhagen for The Guardian, perpetual Foreign Policy favorite and supposed Tory candidate Rory Stewart's kind words for the United States' Afghanistan strategy  in The New York Review of Books, Alec MacGillis's profile of urban guru Richard Florida in The American Prospect, and Lauren Collins on Sonia Sotomayor in The New Yorker. 

Britt Peterson: I’m reading, or more accurately, staring fascinatedly at photos by David Hlynsky of Cold War-era shop windows in Eastern Bloc countries. The photos are like a dispatch from a vanished world of alien kitsch, beautiful and surreal, like “Subway map, toy store,” or “Butterfly, nightgowns, panties.” In an interview with More Intelligent Life, Hlynsky talks about the loss of this world and what it means to him: “[When] I walk through those countries now I … get a sense that the colours have all changed, and gone are the bright primary colours. It’s now just the colours of advertising.”

Want to know what Santa brought Foreign Policy editors this year? Judge for yourself whether we were naughty or nice.

Blake Hounshell: Want to understand our latest financial disaster? Go back and read When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, Roger Lowenstein's painstakingly reported explication of the spectacular 1998 implosion of this most ambitious and arrogant of Greenwich hedge funds. You'll find many of the same characters who are still key players in the game today.

Britt Peterson: In the holiday light reading edition, I spent a good chunk of last night working my way through Kate Christensen's The Great Man, a caustic and hilarious take on ego, love, family, and the New York City art world. Back at work, I'm reading novelist James Salter's review of William Langewiesche's book on Chesley Sullenberger. Salter, a former Air Force pilot, apparently speaks from past experience when he writes, somewhat thrillingly, "Ditching is best done with power."

Rebecca Frankel: The Prince of the Marshes. I've only just begun this memoir of Rory Stewart's about his time in Iraq from 2003-2004 on assignment for the British foreign office, sent there to replace the governor of Maysan. I heard him speak earlier this year and his commentary on occupied territories (in that instance, Afghanistan) was captivating. Judging from what I've read so far Stewart has an aptitude for community immersion in war-torn countries.

David Kenner: Santa brought me Tom Ricks's The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 for Christmas, so I'm working my way through that. I'm just up to the point where Donald Rumsfeld gets the axe, and Gen. Petraeus assumes control of the war effort in Iraq. Also, I'm still reading Mohammed Shafi Agwani's The Lebanese Crisis, 1958: A Documentary Study, where Saeb Salaam and the United National Front are lauding Nasser and bashing Lebanese President Camille Chamoun.

Annie Lowrey: For the holidays, I bought someone else Harold McGee's delightful, exhaustive On Food and Cooking, which I promptly stole back to read. It is part history, part chemistry text, part cooking book, with details about everything from why some fishes taste good as sushi to what makes egg whites hold texture when whipped. I'm also doing some brushing up on Iran and revolutions, and am currently reading Ali Ansari's great article "The Revolution Will Be Mercantilized" in the National Interest.

Christina Larson: It's hard to escape lists this time of year. One of the most interesting comes from Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief of Forbes magazine, who predicts that while the world continually expects bold moves from China, 2010 will be Beijing's "year of incrementalism."

If you have any recommendations for articles or books we should read, throw them in the comments!

Preeti Aroon: The Others by Seba Al-Herz (a pseudonym). Written by a 26-year-old Saudi woman, this book is about a nameless lesbian Shiite college student in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, who also suffers from a health problem. The title The Others is indicative of the “otherness” she feels -- a minority Shiite in Saudi Arabia, a lesbian, sufferer of a health problem.

Elizabeth Dickinson: If you have been watching Chile the last few months, you know that big changes are afoot. For the first time since the fall of the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet in 1989, the left-leaning ruling party Concertacion looks likely to turn power over to a conservative candidate in a run-off this January. This week's Economist explains why that's not bad news, but rather an incredible testament to what the country has achieved in those 20 short years: a stable democracy. And props to Chile -- which has been invited to join the OECD club of rich countries. 

Rebecca Frankel:  For anyone’s who’s ever wondered what the real Hillary is really like off camera, Jonathan Van Meter’s profile of the secretary of state in Vogue’s December 2009 issue should be a pick for your holiday-travel reading. The piece may not pull down any big curtains (sorry, no Monica Lewinsky revelations here), but he does give you a pretty close look -- without makeup, drinking with reporters, and possibly flirting with David Miliband. Van Meter has clearly developed a fondness for Clinton and examines her on a human level far outside the political circus she generally occupies.

Joshua Keating: Blogger Lisa Katayama, of Tokyo Mango fame, had a thought-provoking post on Boing Boing recently examining westerners' seemingly insatiable taste for "weird Japan" stories -- men marrying video game characters, robot unemployment, etc. She argues that to westerners, Japan "feels like a hyperextended high-tech version of 1950s America" and moreover is a relatively safe place to fetishize. 

David Kenner: I noted, sadly, that 2009 was the bloodiest year for journalists since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In Vanity Fair, Michael Bronner wrote an excellent profile of an insurgent’s travel from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to Iraq, and back again. In happier news, for the first time in Beirut, a Lebanese woman was allowed to open a bank account for her underage sons.

Blake Hounshell: In Fool’s Gold, Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett tells the story of a lovable group of J.P. Morgan bankers who invented credit default swaps in the early 1990s, only to find out later that they had created a monster. Although some might take issue with the book’s decidedly pro-House of Morgan slant, it’s a must read if you want to understand the origins of the financial crisis and why banks’ attitudes toward risk went so awry.

Christina Larson: In Vanity Fair, Michael Hogan ponders the purpose of business journalism, a media subculture that seems built to champion, rather than to tear down: "Should business writers concern themselves, first and foremost with telling great stories or with educating the public?" Does the business writer's habitual search for the best stocks, investments, and companies inevitably shortchange journalism's traditional watchdog function?

Britt Peterson: Currently, I’m reading articles about a book I really hope to someday read, if someone who loves me feels like dropping a few hundred dollars: the 45-years-in-the-making, 800,000-entry Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary . If you’re the type of person who can see the use of having 265 archaic synonyms for “immediately” or knowing that a “spunk-fencer” is a synonym for “seller of matches” or tracking the history of the word “elevenses,” this is clearly the ideal holiday gift for you.

Tell us what you're reading in the comments.

Preeti Aroon: Jessica Watson's blog:The 16-year-old Aussie is sailing solo around the world, nonstop and unassisted. She left Australia in October, headed northeast, crossed the equator last month, and is now headed south  toward Cape Horn, the tip of South America. When she’s not busy navigating her yacht, Ella’s Pink Lady, through squalls, she blogs, takes photos, and makes videos.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Peter Baker’s New York Times piece “How Obama Came to Plan for the ‘Surge’” is truly a first draft of history. Tracing back meeting by meeting, it becomes clear how the troop level decision on Afghanistan was debated, where the players stand, and how they agonized over each detail. Of course, what we don’t know but will certainly find out over the coming months is whether Obama’s team countered the many things they feared: an endless war with little to show, a resistant insurgency, a fiscal and psychological strain on the United States, and a repeat of the horrors that America remembers from Vietnam.

Blake Hounshell: War in a Time of Peace. Essential reading for those who want to understand the conflicts of the 1990s, David Halberstam’s 2002 work sheds light on the delicate line Democratic presidents must walk in dealing with their generals in an age of new conflicts and threats. I hope folks in the White House are reading it along with more historical studies like Gordon M. Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster.

Joshua Keating: When I was preparing to interview fractal pioneer Benoit Mandelbrot for FP's Epiphanies, it quickly became clear to me that most of my knowledge of chaos theory came from the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park. I'm finally getting a chance to read all the way through James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science, which is a useful primer on the subject for the mathematically challenged and has some great history of the early days of chaos research, including the always fascinating Mandelbrot.  

Annie Lowrey: I’m nearing the very end of Stephen King’s Under the Dome – a long, excellent book. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading David Foster Wallace’s story in the New Yorker and Peter Baker’s exhaustive piece on the Afghanistan decision in the New York Times. 

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. 

Preeti Aroon

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, by Dambisa Moyo. Zambian-born economist Moyo argues that foreign aid to Africa should be cut off in five years. Her point -- that aid does more harm than good -- is convincing: Billions of aid dollars haven't produced much bang for the buck and have, in fact, promoted dependency and corruption. While the book could use some editing, I recommend it. Moyo gets bonus points for mentioning FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím on page 107.

Elizabeth Dickinson

Long-time Africa journalist Alec Russell's forthcoming portrait of South Africa at a crossroads -- Bring Me My Machine Gun: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma -- traces that country's recent history since the end of apartheid. Despite the incredible challenges overcome, the task before an increasingly turbulent South Africa could prove even greater. 

Rebecca Frankel

"The Swastika and the Cedar," Vanity Fair. In his own words, Christopher Hitchens details his experience in Lebanon -- the rally, the swastika, and the brawl. 

Joshua Keating

Two amazing real-life heist stories: Wired's Joshua Davis scores the first jailhouse interview with the man behind a $100 million diamond heist in 2003 and hears a yarn involving Hasidic criminal masterminds, guys named "the monster" and "the king of keys," and a twist ending involving a salami sandwich. But that's nothing compared with this Spiegel story about two German identical twins who may have just pulled off the perfect crime. (Hat tip: Kottke for both.)

Christina Larson

Two dispatches from the far-flung reaches of the Google empire: In China, and nowhere else in the world, the search engine has begun to offer links to free music downloads. Meanwhile, armchair conservationists across the globe are using Google Earth to track and publicize environmental threats -- from forest fires in Brazil to illegal fisherman off the Canary Islands.

Annie Lowrey

I’m part of a little book club currently reading finance-fiction: The Great Gatsby, Bonfire of the Vanities, and American Psycho. Anyone have any other suggestions for the best novels on Wall Street and its excesses? Post in comments.

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