What We're Reading

Mon, 03/03/2008 - 6:49pm

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.

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way to go

by ajlongini on Mon, 03/03/2008 - 10:19pm

Wow, I am really appreciating this week's reading list.

China's new intelligentsia - It's about TIME somebody addressed the existence of non-Party Chinese thought. Too bad the article was mostly bluster. Still, I find the concluding line quite intriguing "[...]a new world-view is emerging that may in time crystallise a recognisable Chinese model — an alternative, non-western path for the rest of the world to follow." Let's hope the next iteration is more open than the current one.

Wind Power in Paradise - THANK YOU, Travis Daub. I forgot that IEEE Spectrum existed! This fairly exclusive engineering journal always has its finger on the pulse of new developments.

A Nation Among Nations - Looks like I'm going to have to buy this book now. Is anyone else, like, SO over unwarranted American interventionism??

I'd very much like to read 'Gang Leader for a Day'

by oli@dal.ca on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 1:53am

...and plan on doing so after I'm finished my studies this summer. In the meantime, I've been reading the posts he's been doing on the Freakonomics blog about The Wire (which hasn't been as spectacular this season, but is still the best thing around) and they are incredibly interesting. It's cool to see how the gangbangers he watches the program with are half-prescient due to their experiences with such matters and half typical television viewers who want the most scandalous possible plot twists to happen.

Hounshell = Outrageous

by kidzib on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 8:23am

The "Gaza Bombshell" is one of the most important stories of the year, but Blake dismisses it as "silly" and something the Bush Administration "made little attempt to hide." Excuse me? Is this to imply that the whole world previously knew that the American government was funding and training a political militia for the express purpose of overthrowing a democratically elected government??? News to me...

Time to tackle that pro-Israel bias, Blake! Stories like this can't be swept under the rug...

The point

by Blake Hounshell on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 9:38am

Was that it wasn't a "secret," since it was previously reported and the Bush administration was open about its intentions, though Rose adds new details to the story.

Glenn Kessler adds...

by Blake Hounshell on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 6:26pm

The Washington Post's diplomatic correspondent, Glenn Kessler, weighs in:
"The article does contain excerpts from some fascinating documents--including talking points by a senior U.S. official accidentally left behind in a meeting--that demonstrate how much pressure Rice and other top officials put on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led government. But many of the reporters traveling with Rice felt the article mostly summarized information that many of us had written about at the time. The administration's plan to bolster the Fatah security forces was well known--and the article does not definitely prove that even a partial coup was part of the plans."

to kidzib

by ajlongini on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 10:02pm

Whoa, kidzib, let's tone down the personal attacks a little bit here.

By the way, you should be aware that the U.S. has concentrated on "funding and training a political militia for the express purpose of overthrowing a democratically elected government" time and time again - take the overthrow of democratically-elected Salvador Allende in Chile, 1973. The U.S. government saw the Socialist leader as a threat to its business interests and funded the coup that murdered him.

What about, most recently, the pressure our government has been putting on the PPP of Pakistan to accept a powersharing agreement with Pervez Musharraf? We would ignore the fact that his party lost the election just because Musharraf would make Pakistan a more welcoming doormat for our country.

In addition to taking down governments that don't support our interests, the U.S. has propped up those that superficially do support them. Take the government of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai. According to Sarah Chayes, a former NPR correspondent who is currently living there, most Afghans believe the U.S. is allied with the Taliban, since we supply money to Pakistan which in turn supports it. She goes on to explain that the people of Afghanistan elected their president, "[b]ut every other government official that Afghans interact with on a daily basis, they didn't elect. We're only fooling ourselves when we talk about this democratically-elected Afghan government."

It's not uncommon and it shouldn't be news - the U.S. will do what is best for the U.S.