What We're Reading

Posted By Blake Hounshell Monday, April 9, 2007 - 2:12 PM Share

Henry Bowles

Bank Robbers, by Joshua Kurlantzick at The New Republic Online. Kurlantzick warns of an emerging group of donor states whose lending practices (call it "rogue aid") may force the World Bank into a race to the bottom in terms of the transparency, austerity, and environmental standards to which aid recipients are held.

Mike Boyer

Iran v. Britain: Who Blinked? by Francis Fukuyama. Pundits such as Charles Krauthammer and John Bolton charged that Britain capitulated to Iran. Actually, it's the other way around.

Christine Chen

Pearls Before Breakfast, by Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Magazine, April 8, 2007. Can beauty be measured, or is it only in the eye of the beholder? Joshua Bell, one of the top classical violinists in the world, threw on some jeans and a baseball cap, took his $3.5 million Stradivarius to the Washington, DC Metro, and busked the morning rush hour. Hardly anyone stopped, and only one person recognized him. He made just $32.17 in 43 minutes.

Michael Cognato

Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. John Pomfret, now at the Washington Post, studied at Nanjing University with the first class to enter school after the Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s, and has frequently returned to China since then. In Chinese Lessons, he traces the story of five of his classmates, from their past suffering to today's successes, and in the process fills in crucial details of what's lying behind all those headlines about a rising China.

Prerna Mankad

"Serious Money" in Vanity Fair, May 2007 (not available online). Michael Wolff explains how private equity works, why it's so lucrative, who the big players are, where it's headed—and why he wants in.

Carolyn O'Hara

Millions without a place to call their own, International Herald Tribune. An incredible photo essay by Greg Constantine about the world's citizens of nowhere.
The Typing Life, by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker. How writers used to write, told through the short history of the typewriter.

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