Preeti Aroon

GABRIEL MALAYA/AFP/Getty Images

"World to Peace Corps: Skilled Volunteers Needed," by Nicholas Benequista for the Christian Science Monitor. Last year, Ethiopian officials politely told the Peace Corps that they needed people with serious expertise, not just unskilled young adults brimming with enthusiasm. Soon, they could be getting more of what they want. For more on the challenges facing the government agency, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps."

Mike Boyer

"The Truth About Putin and Medvedev," in the New York Review of Books. Amy Night reviews Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov's Putin: The Results: An Independent Expert Report, a publication which the Kremlin has gone out of its way to make sure ordinary Russians know nothing about. And understandably. Its results are damning, to say the least.

Blake Hounshell

"World Bank backs anti-AIDS experiment," by Andrew Jack in the Financial Times. Call it "reverse prostitution." In a novel experiment, a consortium of groups is paying rural Tanzanians not to contract STDs.

Joshua Keating

"Russia's region of 'lawlessness'" by James Rodgers of BBC News. Chechnya, which lies inside Russia's "zone of anti-terrorist operations," is typically entirely off-limits to foreign journalists. The BBC's correspondent hitched a ride with a Council of Europe delegation and found a place where appearances have improved but "something terrible has clearly happened."

Prerna Mankad

"Hedge funds muck in down on the farm," in the Financial Times. James Macintosh and Kate Burgess highlight the latest financial industry trend: hedge funds buying up acres of farmland across Australia, South America, and Eastern Europe. If food prices continue to rise as they are betting, a few rich people will likely get a whole lot richer.

Preeti Aroon

"Cubans now can enjoy cellphones, DVDs ... legally," by Sara Miller Llana of the Christian Science Monitor. Cubans can now own cellphones and DVD players, as well as stay at hotels once limited to foreign tourists, thanks to Raúl Castro. But given that the average Cuban's monthly salary is $17, the new president's changes may be more politically symbolic than economically liberating.

Blake Hounshell

"Caution: NAFTA at Work," in Miller-McCune. Princeton's Douglas Massey argues that only by massively deepening its economic integration with Mexico can the United States solve its illegal-immigration problem. (Hat tip: Matt Yglesias)

Joshua Keating

"After America: Is the West Being Overtaken by the Rest," by Ian Buruma in the New Yorker. Buruma reviews the "grand thesis" of the West's decline and Asia's rise as it appears in new books by Fareed Zakaria, Robert Kagan, and Bill Emmott. He concludes that, even in the new Asian order, the U.S. will continue to play an indespensible role. "Democracy would be a far more persuasive model than Chinese or Russian autocracy," he cautions, "if some of its main proponents were less eager to believe that the open society comes out of the barrel of a gun."

Prerna Mankad

Carolyn O'Hara

"The New E-spionage Threat" in BusinessWeek. In a recent interview with FP, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke describes Chinese hacks on U.S. government and defense industry computers as "massive espionage." BW's cover story this week examines the growing threat.

Preeti Aroon

"Outsourcing at Home," by Rachael King in BusinessWeek. As wages in India increase and the dollar loses value against the rupee, some businesses—including India’s Tata Consultancy Services—are setting up shop in the United States, namely in areas of the country where the cost of living is below average.

Blake Hounshell

"Russia 2017: Three Scenarios," published by the Finnish parliament's Committee for the Future. Russia's former vassal weighs in on what the giant next door will look like 100 years after the Russian Revolution. Bottom line: Nokias for everyone!

Joshua Keating

Poor People by William T. Vollman. I absolutely loved Vollman's epic historical novel Europe Central, but I'm having some trouble getting into this nonfiction exploration of the subject of poverty. He certainly deserves credit for ambition though.

Prerna Mankad

"The Greening of Walmart," in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. How does the world's largest retailer become environmentally friendly while sticking to the bottom line? Stanford Graduate School of Business's Erica L. Plambeck and Lyn Denend endeavor to find out.

Carolyn O'Hara

"The Things that Carried Him: The True Story of a Soldier’s Last Trip Home," by Chris Jones in the May Esquire. (Not online.) Simply put, it’s one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read in a long, long time.

Prerna Mankad

"The soft diplomacy of Belgian chocolates," in The Spectator. Emily Maitlis describes her recent impressions of an ever-changing Libya. Although the imported Belgian chocolates she enjoyed are a symbol of Libya's increasing economic openness and development, there's no doubting who's the boss politically.

Mike Boyer

"The Charms of Wikipedia," by Nicholson Baker in the New York Review of Books. In Wikipedia, novelist Nicholson Baker sees a "vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks." Um, OK.

Carolyn O'Hara

Lhasa: Streets With Memories, by Robert Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia who recently spoke with FP about the riots and the Chinese response.

Blake Hounshell

1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, by Benny Morris. Israel's most unpredictable historian weighs in on his country's violent birth.

Joshua Keating

The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster. My Park Slope homeboy Paul Auster explores his native city in three short novels with detective themes.

Preeti Aroon

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, by Steve Coll. OK, I didn't actually read this book; rather, I read a review of the book by Milton Viorst in the Washington Post). The book is essentially a biography of Osama bin Laden—who we learn had at least 53 siblings and married his 14-year-old cousin when he was 17—and his family, including his one-eyed father who went from bricklayer to wealthy palace builder for the House of Saud.

Preeti Aroon

"Looking Towards the Future," in Tom Ricks's Inbox in the Washington Post. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey briefs the military, PowerPoint style, on his predictions of what's going to be happening in international relations. One prediction: "The death of Castro... 250,000 refugees in 36 months."

Blake Hounshell

"The Obama Doctrine," in the American Prospect. "Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades," Spencer Ackerman writes. But what does that really mean in practice?

Carolyn O'Hara

"The Sahel," by Paul Salopek in National Geographic. Salopek, a stone-cold great writer, weighs in beautifully on the invisible lines that crisscross the Sahel, fomenting conflict and poverty – and at one point, landing him in jail. Don’t miss Pascal Maitre's accompanying photographs.

Joshua Keating

"After Putin," by Sen. Joseph Biden in the Wall Street Journal. The former presidential candidate deserves credit for advocating that the U.S. take a tougher stance with Russia without indulging in the lazy Russophobia common to such arguments. But while Biden demonstrates that he probably understands the nuances of Russia politics better than any of the remaining candidates, his op-ed is short on specifics about what he thinks the next president should actually do.

Prerna Mankad

"Put a Patent on that Pleat," by Reena Jana in BusinessWeek. A look at the latest efforts elite designers are making in order to curb the unauthorized reproduction of their designs by mass retailers. Although some legal cases have been won, it's clear that designers are facing a steep uphill climb in protecting their IP -- and that's not even taking into account the international challenges.

Carolyn O'Hara

Kill The Cliche -- a new site by journalist Evgeny Morozov that tracks journalistic clichés found in major newspapers and calls out the worst offenders.

Preeti Aroon

"Beyond the Border of War," by Tamara Jones in the Washington Post. More than 16,000 American troops have deserted the military since the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly five years ago. An estimated 200 of them crossed into Canada, where ageing, Vietnam-era draft dodgers are offering them support. 

Blake Hounshell

"Israel, Syria and the failure of Annapolis." On his personal blog, Economist correspondent Gideon Lichfield discusses an alarming new poll showing that Hamas leader Ismail Haniya would defeat Mahmoud Abbas in a presidential election.

Mike Boyer

"Last Days of the Rickshaw," by Calvin Trillin in National Geographic, April 2008. Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, has one of the world's few remaining large fleets of hand-pulled rickshaws. Local authorities aren't necessarily proud of that fact. Are rickshaws a symbol of exploitation, or just a convenient form of transportation?

Prerna Mankad

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," in Portfolio. Jesse Eisinger surveys the grim trend that has developed in today's economy, where busted firms and their CEOs take plenty of "responsibility" for their failures, yet suffer few consequences for their reckless or misguided actions. His conclusion? Don't expect things to change any time soon.

Preeti Aroon

“An Earthquake That Shifted the World Around Us,” by Faiza Saleh Ambah in the Washington Post. The Saudi hip-hop group Dark2Men had never rapped in public before, due to their country’s social restrictions, until the recent MTV Arabia competition in Dubai. Check out this video of them rapping. As an FP article put it last year, it’s a hip-hop world.

Mike Boyer

"The Patton of Counterinsurgency," by Fredrick and Kimberly Kagan in The Weekly Standard. Gen. David Petraeus may have been the brains behind the successes of the "surge," but the task of turning theory into reality was largely left to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno. Petraeus may be the headlines, but Odierno will "be remembered in military history as the man who redefined the operational art of counterinsurgency."

Blake Hounshell

"What Microloans Miss," by the incomparable James Surowiecki in the latest New Yorker. What the developing world truly needs most is investors willing to take risks, not more small-scale lenders.

Joshua Keating

"How a tiny West African country became the world's first narco state," by Ed Vuilliamy in The Observer. This article is a truly depressing profile of Guinea-Bissau, a failed state with no prisons and almost no police that is now completely dominated by the Colombian drug traffickers, who use it as a transfer point to ship cocaine into Europe. The value of the drug trade now exceeds the national income and dozens of gaudy mansions are being built in the world's fifth-poorest country. Worst of all, crack-cocaine addiction is spreading among the country's own citizens, who are often paid in kind for helping the traffickers.

Prerna Mankad

"Riots, Terrorism, etc" in the London Review of Books. LRB contributing editor John Lancaster brings into sharp relief the problems with British journalism today through his favorable review of Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. From sloppy fact checking (or none at all) to ubiquitous PR-generated stories, Davies -- and Lancaster -- fears that the illness of British media is terminal.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Prerna Mankad

Warren Buffett's 2008 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders (pdf). Considered a "must read" for any investor every year, Buffett's often humorous letter on his company's progress in 2007 includes some sound investing advice, a few anxious reflections on the state of the U.S. economy, and a number of notes on his own errors during the past year.

Mike Boyer

"China's new intelligensia," in Prospect. Mark Leonard makes a characteristically smart attempt to find a pulse among China's intellectual class and finds it to be surprisingly alive, if somewhat camouflaged.

Joshua Keating

Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh. Note to aspiring sociologists: Don't begin studies of urban poverty by asking housing project residents, "How does it feel to be black and poor?" Venkatesh (of Freakonomics fame) learned this and other lessons during six years of studying the underground economy within a Chicago housing project. Some have found the close relationship he maintained with a prominent crack dealer to be morally questionable, but it's hard to imagine that the stereotype-breaking insights in this memoir could have been gained any other way.

Travis Daub

"Wind Power in Paradise," by Erico Guizzo in IEEE Spectrum. The Galapagos Islands, home to 20,000 residents and 120,000 annual visitors, now generates half its power via wind turbines, which means less pollution, less oil consumption, and a lesser chance that a tanker will run aground on the islands' delicate reefs.

"Space Wars - Coming to the Sky Near You?" by Theresa Hitchens in Scientific American.

Lucy Moore

Thomas Bender's A Nation Among Nations retells the American story, but in a fully international context. From Columbus to the present, Bender asks us to rethink American exceptionalism, recognizing its role as an actor among many on the global stage.

Blake Hounshell

"The Gaza Bombshell," in Vanity Fair. David Rose alleges there was a secret U.S. plan to arm Fatah against Hamas in Gaza. It's kind of a silly claim, since it was reported at the time and the Bush administration made little attempt to hide its plan. Still, Rose adds new details and quotes neocon stalwart David Wurmser criticizing the Bush administration's support for Mahmoud Abbas.

Preeti Aroon

"Tom Ricks’s Inbox" in the Washington Post. What happens when you’re in Iraq and your digital camera gets hit by a rocket-propelled grenade? The Post's military correspondent shares a hilarious e-mail—which tells a story that probably isn't true—about trying to file an insurance claim. It's good for a quick laugh, even if it's a tall tale.

Blake Hounshell

"The Audacity of Data," by Noam Scheiber in the New Republic. In which Scheiber argues, "Despite Obama's reputation for grandiose rhetoric and utopian hope-mongering, the Obamanauts aren't radicals--far from it."

Prerna Mankad

"Bear market: This is the latest buying opportunity." The Times of London's Anatole Kaletsky provides a rare glimmer of optimism about the current financial turmoil.

Lucy Moore

The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Tim Judah's suprisingly readable account of Serbia's messy history sheds light on just why they are so bitter about Kosovo independence.

Carolyn O'Hara

The Myth of the Surge," in Rolling Stone. Rosen reports that the dirty truth of the surge in Iraq is that we’re arming former insurgents and bribing just about everyone.

Caitlin Wall

The Essence of Decision. Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow describe the Cuban Missile Crisis from three different theoretical viewpoints in the field of international relations: the Rational Actor Model, the Organizational Behavior Model, and the Governmental Politics Model. Each viewpoint reveals new truths the others don't, reminding readers to always test every assumption from several different perspectives. It's the "Run Lola Run" of IR theory.

Preeti Aroon

• "Why It Was Called 'Water Torture'," by Richard E. Mezo in the Washington Post. An argument against waterboarding, written by an American who actually experienced it.

Caitlin Wall

• The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. Mark Halperin and John F. Harris look at the state of modern American politics and attempt to write a sort of handbook for the secrets of the trade. Political strategy trumps all in this less-than-inspiring, if timely read.

Christine Chen

• The In Septembers of Shiraz. First-time novelist Dalia Sofer, whose own family escaped from Iran in 1982, tells the tale of Isaac Amin, a gem trader who is imprisoned and tortured by Revolutionary Guards for being Jewish. During his incarceration, his wife Farnaz tries to keep the family together while his young daughter is befriended by the daughter of the man who runs the prison where he's being held. Meanwhile, his secular son is far away in Brooklyn, falling in love with the daughter of his Hasidic landlord.

Blake Hounshell

• The Maldives: A Nation in Peril. President-for-life Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is no democrat, but he is an ardent environmentalist. The fact that the Maldives' highest point is six feet above sea level tends to sharpen the mind on that score.

Mike Boyer

• "Mitt Romney: Not in His Father's Footsteps," Rick Perlstein in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. Romney "will go down as the most robotic big-ticket presidential candidate in history," because his father taught him that authenticity kills.

FAROOQ NAEEM/Getty Images

Kate Palmer

• Pakistan Kicked Me Out. Others Were Less Lucky. By Nicholas Schmidle, Washington Post, Jan. 3. Freelance writer (and FP contributor) Schmidle recounts his recent expulsion from Pakistan, which happened shortly after he reported about the Taliban's resurgence there. It's a powerful reminder of the perilous state of press freedom in Pakistan.

Mike Boyer

• The Pentagon: A History, by Steve Vogel. Vogel provides a fascinating history of how the Pentagon came to be and, along the way, hints at what it tells us about ourselves. 

Carolyn O'Hara

• The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, a book that deserves all the praise it has received and more. 

Blake Hounshell

• U.S. Rules of Engagement for Iraq. Wikileaks got a hold of the U.S. military's complex guide to the troops on when to shoot and when to hold fire. The big news? Hot pursuit into Syria and Iran was OK as of 2005, as long as the higher-ups signed off. 

Prerna Mankad 

• Der Spiegel interview with UAE Economics Minister Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi, who speaks candidly about exploited workers, the country's rapid growth, how she got her job, and more.

Preeti Aroon

• Will Wall Street's Flu Make India Sneeze? in Tehelka. An analysis of what the U.S. recession could mean for India's economy.

Caitlin Wall

• Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement, by Dean G. Pruitt and Sung Hee Kim. An overview of how psychology governs conflict, from a typical argument about who gets to use the family car, to the most rancorous and intractable violent conflicts around the world.

Preeti Aroon

• "Newspapers thriving? Yes – in Asia," by Simon Montlake in the Christian Science Monitor. Last year, FP said you can no longer argue that newspapers are dead. Although newspaper circulation may be falling in North America, it's climbing in Asia, fueled in part by rising literacy rates and greater freedom of the press.

Shaun Heasley/Getty Images

Mike Boyer

• "Guest List for the First Lady's Box at the State of the Union," posted by Time's Mark Halperin. If this list is any indication, watch for the speech to be big on the economy and Iraq, with maybe a little health care and AIDS in Africa chucked in for good measure. The question is whether the economy or Iraq gets more time.

Christine Chen

• "The $100 Billion Woman," in Fortune. Melinda Gates finally goes public about what it's like being half of the world's most powerful philanthropic partnership, giving away billions of dollars to fight malaria and other neglected diseases.

Blake Hounshell

• "McCain's Secret Plan to Capture Bin Laden," at the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog. The Arizona senator knows how to get the world's most wanted man, but he's keeping it to himself, in his words, "because I have my own ideas and it would require implementation of certain policies and procedures that only as the president of the United States can be taken."

Drew Kumpf

• Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future, by Joel C. Rosenberg. From Russia and China to Israel and Iraq, this book examines current events and future newspaper headlines based on Biblical prophecy, interviews with world leaders, and an eye for what's next.

Prerna Mankad

• "It's time to drink toilet water," in Slate. Eileen Zimmerman brings to light the merits of drinking recycled sewage water. It's clean, efficient, and environmentally friendly, yet people still can't overcome the "yuck" factor.

Preeti Aroon

• "And Then There Was One," by Monte Reel in the Washington Post Magazine. What if you were the last person in your tribe? In a gripping tale about property rights, economic development, and indigenous peoples, this article describes how a lone indigenous man, living as the last of his tribe in the Brazilian rain forest, was granted his own protected patch of land that is the size of Hong Kong.

Christine Chen

• Atonement, by Ian McEwan. Read the book and saw the movie. Beautiful storytelling. WWII scenes showing the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk are especially evocative. Thumbs up for both.

Travis Daub

• "Polish teen derails tram after hacking train network," by John Leyden in The Register. Remember how the FAA is worried that terrorists could hack Boeing's fancy new plane? Well, a 14-year-old in Lodz, Poland, actually took control of his city's tram system using a modified TV remote control.

Blake Hounshell

• "Gold is a bright prospect for the bold," in Monday's Financial Times. Columnist John Dizard paints a scenario wherein the price of gold is peaks, Spain drops out of the eurozone, and gold rebounds.

Joshua Keating

• "What People Will Die For," by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek International. Zakaria argues that the prevailing trends of globalization and democratization are weakening the nation state and empowering ethnic nationalists throughout the world. He applies this trend to Pakistan, Kenya, India, and Kosovo as well as my favorite geopolitical obsession: Belgium.

Carolyn O'Hara

• The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur, by Daoud Hari. Hari's simple prose can't mask the devastation he suffers as his village is destroyed, his family killed, and his efforts to get the word about the genocide go unheard.

Preeti Aroon

• "'Wombs for rent' grows in India," by Sunita Thakur for Marketplace. Just about everything seems to get outsourced to India these days. You can even pay up to $10,000 to rent a poor Indian woman's womb and get the baby you've always wanted but couldn't carry yourself. Some say the practice gives destitute women opportunity; others say it's exploitation. The debate continues on a New York Times blog.

Mike Boyer

• "Four Types of Government Operatives: Bullies, Muggers, Sneak Thieves, and Con Men," by Robert Higgs for the Independent Institute. Unhappy about your government leaders? Higgs argues it's because bullies, muggers, thieves, and con men "make up a large proportion of the leading figures in government today."

JAVIER SORIANO/AFP/Getty

David Francis

• Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko detail how the latter's murdered husband morphed from loyal KGB operative to vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin. It contains many priceless nuggets—for example, did you know that Putin, when asked to run for president of Russia, asked to be put in charge of Gazprom instead?

Blake Hounshell

• They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, by Jacob Heilbrunn. As you might guess from the title, this is hardly a sympathetic portrait of the "neoconservative" movement. But with Weekly Standard favorite John McCain on on the upswing in New Hampshire, Heilbrunn's prediction that the "neocons" will rise again is looking prescient.

Adam Lewis

• "China Offers Unproven Medical Treatments," by Christoper Bodeen and Alan Scher Zagier in the Washington Post. While presidential candidates debate the arcana of healthcare policy, Americans are taking advantage of the newest trend in outsourcing: medicine. Chinese hospitals are willing to perform little-tested and potentially lethal procedures using stem cell transplants to aid those suffering from debilitating diseases and disorders. But at what cost?

Prerna Mankad

• "How the millennium development goals are unfair to Africa," a Brookings Global Economy and Development Working Paper. FP contributor William Easterly offers a goal-by-goal analysis of how the U.N. is setting Africa up for "failure."

Kate Palmer

• Climate Debate Daily, a new aggregator from the people who brought you Arts and Letters Daily. With so much spin, hyperbole, and misinformation about global warming and climate change, this is a great new source for all the major arguments being made on all sides of this important debate.

Preeti Aroon

• "How to Cut Ph.D. Time to Degree," in InsideHigherEd.com. Humanities and social science doctoral students in the U.S. can sometimes take a decade or more to earn their Ph.D.s. Harvard came up with a solution, or, should we say, ultimatum: For every five students who are eight years or more into a doctoral program, the department loses one admissions slot. The policy seems to have worked.

Christine Y. Chen

• "Treasure Hunt," in the New Yorker. Marion True, the well-respected former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has been charged with art trafficking by the Italian authorities. This is a tantalizing peek inside the rarified world of the global art trade.

David Francis

• Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, by Marcus Luttrell. A Navy SEAL writes about the moral fog that hangs over the war in Afghanistan.

Blake Hounshell

• "America's Priorities in the War on Terror," by Mike Huckabee in Foreign Affairs. The surging Republican presidential hopeful slams the Bush administration's "arrogant bunker mentality" and, in the same paragraph, denounces the Law of the Sea Treaty. This confused essay may explain why Huckabee can't decide whether Thomas Friedman or Frank Gaffney is his ideological lodestar. 

Prerna Mankad

• "Is there anything good about men?" by Roy F. Baumeister. A Florida State University psychology professor delivered a provocative speech (currently doing the email rounds)  to the August 2007 American Psychological Association meeting in San Francisco. He answers this age-old question from a cultural perspective: Men are not only useful, but also exploited, apparently. Also, there is no patriarchal conspiracy against women.

Carolyn O’Hara

• "Inside the CIA's notorious 'black sites,'" by Mark Benjamin. Salon.com talks to a Yemeni terror suspect to get the first look at what it's like to be disappeared by the CIA for 19 months.

Preeti Aroon

• "The Most Important Trends of 2007," in BusinessWeek. From toxic toys to $100 oil to social networking, this slide show recaps the trends and fads that have defined 2007.

Mike Boyer

• "How Africa's desert sun can bring Europe power," by Robin McKie in The Guardian. Can a $10 billion solar power project in the African desert supply one-sixth of Europe's power?

Christine Chen

• Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter, by Phoebe Damrosch, a former server at Chef Thomas Keller's Per Se restaurant in Manhattan. It's the best behind-the-scenes restaurant book since Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

Blake Hounshell

• Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography. Edward Rice's profile of the Victorian age's most colorful explorer and spy reveals a man with a hands-on interest in foreign sexual practices, obsessed with obscure languages, and surprisingly receptive to early Mormonism. Burton's wife, Isabel, wasn't too impressed by his intellectual defenses of polygamy, however.

Prerna Mankad

• "Taking sport seriously," in Prospect. David Goldbatt argues that it's high time athletics be accorded the same cultural weight as regular performing arts. With half of humanity tuned in, he writes, the World Cup finals are "the greatest collective experience in history" and the Olympic Games are "the most significant global celebration of internationalism."

Preeti Aroon

• "Can Greed Save Africa?", by Roben Farzad in BusinessWeek. Investors are flocking to sub-Saharan Africa to develop businesses, and they may bring about the improvements that billions of dollars in foreign aid haven't.

Christine Chen

• Slate's Jack Shafer is calling it "the smartest drug story of the year." But you should read the original itself, "How America Lost the War on Drugs," in the latest Rolling Stone. In a gripping narrative, Ben Wallace-Wells traces the failure of U.S. drug policies from the late 1980s to the present. He also quotes Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance and author of "Think Again: Drugs" from the September/October issue of FP.

Blake Hounshell

• "In Praise of Somaliland: A Beacon of Hope in the Thorn of Africa," by Peter Tatchell in the Autumn 2007 issue of The Liberal. Somaliland is getting many things right, and it's doing so in an extremely dodgy neighborhood. So why doesn't the international community reward its success by recognizing its independence?

Adam Lewis

• "Hooray for Bollywood," by Jason Overdorf in the Dec. 10 issue of Newsweek. No longer content to produce films for the Indian market, movie house UTV is reaching beyond the subcontinent. The production company's owner, Ronnie Screwvala, has inked large investment deals with mega-movie houses such as Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures in what industry insiders see as a growing trend in global cinema.

Prerna Mankad

• "Inside India's trade in human remains," by Scott Carney in Wired. Ever wonder where medical students around the world get their clean, white human skeletons? They may just be from skull and bone smugglers in India, who export them out of the country illegally.

Preeti Aroon

• "Ukraine Remembers Famine Horror," by Laura Sheeter on BBC News. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the "Holomodor," the Stalin-devised famine that is thought to have killed at least 3 million people in Ukraine. The country has officially declared it a genocide, but some in Russia object to that term.

Christine Chen

• To End a War. Richard Holbrooke's memoir of negotiating an end to the war in the Balkans is one of the best books out there on modern diplomacy. Wonder if Condi read it in advance of Annapolis?

Blake Hounshell

• Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth, by the good folks at The Onion. In which we learn that "Yemen is home to terrorists who are neither smart enough to come up with evil plots nor brave enough to carry them out" and that "there is something in Costa Rica for every nouveau riche environmentalist from the U.S."

Prerna Mankad

• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. From Switzerland to Bhutan, veteran NPR correspondent Eric Weiner takes readers on a journey to ten of the world's happiest countries in a quest to find out what makes the people living in them so blissful.

Carolyn O'Hara

• Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff, by Rosemary Mahoney. Mahoney, who also wrote the excellent Whoredom in Kimmage, delivers a page-turning travelogue about her dream of rowing the Nile alone.

Kate Palmer

• Ahead of the Annapolis Middle East peace summit this week, a few backgrounders: "The Real Two-State Solution," by Aluf Benn, Salon.com. (Why Bush is too late). "To Annapolis—Without Illusions," by Shlomo Avineri, Ha'aretz (What Israelis are expecting in Maryland). "Short on Peace, Long on Process," Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera (Why the talks are a distraction from Iraq). And "Key Topics, Major Players," Wall Street Journal (A rundown of who's who and what's at stake at Annapolis).

Mike Boyer

• Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2007, special issue on "South America in the 21st Century." VQR has tapped dozens of the continent's best writers in an effort to paint a picture of where Latin America stands today—from the street level—including drug wars in Colombia, protests in Caracas, and transsexuals in Lima. It's an extraordinary effort that deserves kudos.

Christine Chen

• Bartle Bull (real name) has an essay in Prospect titled "Mission Accomplished," in which he says that the large, important questions about Iraq have been resolved positively and that the country is unified, has embraced democracy, and avoided civil war. Although there is certainly still violence in the country, he adds, it's largely criminal and not ideological, and it's local rather than national or transnational. Um, I call bull on that. But still, he does make some interesting points.

David Francis

• Horseman, Pass By, by Larry McMurtry. If you liked No Country for Old Men (the book or the movie), you'll like McMurtry. He writes about the conflict between the "old" West (cattlemen) and the "new" West (oilmen) in Texas after the end of the second World War.

Blake Hounshell

• Global Risk: Business Success in Turbulent Times, by Seán Cleary and Theirry Malleret. Stirring prose it's not, but the book's timing is impeccable.

Prerna Mankad

• Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor. Roubini expands on his recent FP Web exclusive and paints a frightening picture of an approaching U.S. recession. It's not only "inevitable in the next few months," the NYU professor writes, but it may well be a "meltdown of the financial system of a severity and magnitude like we have never observed before."

Preeti Aroon

• "E-Resistance Blooms in Pakistan," by Manjeet Kripalani in Der Spiegel. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf may have muzzled the media, but communication is thriving in cyberspace. Blogs and Web sites such as Facebook are being used to keep people informed and organize "flash" protests. An estimated half a billion text messages a day have also been keeping the citizenry up to date.

Mike Boyer

• "What Makes a Terrorist?" by Alan Krueger in the November/December 2007 issue of The American. Almost 60 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers have more than a high school education, compared with less than 15 percent of the general population. Krueger explains why, from an economist's perspective, and further debunks the notion that poverty and lack of education cause terrorism.

Christine Chen

• One of my local TV stations ran a report over the holiday weekend about the remarkable Frank Buckles, the last American soldier alive to have seen combat in World War I. At 106 years old, Buckles is more lucid than I am. There's a short profile of him in Monday's New York Times.
• Also in honor of Veterans Day, NPR has been presenting a series on what life is like for Iraq veterans returning home. Renee Montagne had an especially moving report about two mothers, Sgt. Kimber Smith and Sgt. Marisa Gonzales, who've had difficulties adjusting to life back in Southern California after their tours of duty.

Blake Hounshell

• Calculating the carbon footprint of wine: my research findings, a post at Dr. Vino's wine blog. Wine guru Tyler Colman teams up with numbers man Pablo Paster to tally the amount of carbon it takes to make and transport your favorite bottle of wine. Read their working paper here (pdf).

Joshua Keating

• 
  

  TENGKU BAHAR/AFP/Getty Images

  Robert D. Kaplan. "America's Elegant Decline." The Atlantic Monthly. The influential writer who predicted "The Coming Anarchy" and pushed American military leaders to focus on counterinsurgency and urban warfare now wonders if we've let traditional military strengths like sea power decline too far. Can a 150-ship navy meet the security challenges of the 21st century or is the United States, like Britain before it, on the path to giving up global sea supremacy?

Prerna Mankad

• "Don't be scared of the Russians," in The Spectator. Con Coughlin argues that Russia is not interested in starting a new Cold War with the West — it just "wants to be loved." Nonetheless, Russia is paranoid about the intentions of the United States and its European allies, and if its fears play out in the form of increasing NATO encroachment or a missile-defense system, escalating aggression may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.