What We're Reading

Preeti Aroon

• The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer, by Julian Dibbell in the New York Times. American and European players of online, role-playing games are outsourcing their hunts for much-needed virtual coin money to Chinese sweatshops of online computer-game players earning about 30 cents per hour. 

Mike Boyer

• This Book Is Not Good, by Eugene McCarraher in Commonweal. Is Chris Hitchens a shoddy intellectual who "no longer merits our attention or respect"? McCarraher thinks so.

Christine Chen

Alex Wong/Getty Images News

• The General's Report, by Seymour Hersh, June 25, 2007. The New Yorker's tenacious reporter continues to delve deeper into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Now he writes about Major General Antonio Taguba, who headed up the Army's initial investigation. Taguba tried his hardest to bring the abuse to the attention of his superiors but was continually ignored. Eventually, his career had hit a brick wall because of the investigation. 

Blake Hounshell

• Should the U.S. respond to China's exchange rate policy by raising its import tariffs? on the blog of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik. The answer is probably "no," but it's not quite so simple.

Jeffrey Marn

• The Americans Have Landed, by Thomas P.M. Barnett in Esquire. The story of the creation of America's new "Africa Command." Aside from the killer title, this is an interesting look at the birth of a new command that is supposed to become everything Central Command isn't. "It will engage in preemptive nation-building instead of preemptive regime change." In short, Iraq done right.

Carolyn O'Hara

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. Unlike Eugene McCarraher, I haven't yet made up my mind about this book, but one thing's for sure: It's Hitch at his most Hitchian.

Kate Palmer

• Inconvenient Truths, by Hugh Miles in the London Review of Books, June 21, 2007. After 18 years, a $2.7 billion peace offering, and one conviction, FP contributor Hugh Miles revisits the legal investigation surrounding the Pan Am Flight 103 disaster—and finds more fault with Iran than Libya.
• U.S. War on Terror Shows Promise in the Philippines, by James Hookway, Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2007. A look at a rare, quiet, and—so far—successful front in the U.S. war on terror.