Preeti Aroon

• Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web, by Ron Nixon in the New York Times. Most of Africa lacks the infrastructure to surf the Internet. About 75 percent of the continent's Internet traffic is routed through Britain, or even the United States. Will the Internet age bypass Africa altogether?

Mike Boyer

• Do you taste what I taste? by Mike Steinberger. In a three-part series for Slate, Steinberger asks, "Do certain physiological traits make some wine critics better than others?"

Christine Chen

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling.  Harry dies. Or not.

Blake Hounshell 

• Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown. Paul Theroux, a former Peace Corps volunteer and now a famous author, returns to find Africa in shambles and his youthful illusions shattered.

Prerna Mankad

• China's Space Weapons, in the Wall Street Journal. Ashley Tellis explains why China launched its famous anti-satellite test earlier this year (it's not why you think), and why efforts to tie China into a space arms control regime now are bound to fail.

Carolyn O'Hara

• How, and How Not, to Stop AIDS in Africa, by William Easterly in the August 16th New York Review of Books. FP contributor William Easterly on Helen Epstein's The Invisible Cure, and why much of what you know about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is wrong.