What We're Reading

Preeti Aroon

"Eyeing Tourism, Haiti Battles Its Violent Reputation," by Reed Lindsay in the Christian Science Monitor. Think Haiti is filled with gangs, muggings, and flaming street blockades? Think again, says this article. Data shows that it is one of the region's safest countries. Violence is localized to a few slums in the capital. (Of note: Haiti is one of the world's most improved countries in the just-released 2008 Failed States Index.)

Alex Ely

Are things finally brewing over in Zimbabwe? The Guardian reports today that the United States and Britain are leading an international condemnation of the shameful political violence there, labeling Mugabe-run Zimbabwe "not legitimate." No word yet on where South Africa's Thabo Mbeki stands, or if he cares.

Blake Hounshell

"Getting this off my chest about the Olympics," at theAtlantic.com. James Fallows explains the multifarious ways in which "the Chinese government that has worked so hard to make these Olympics happen is now perversely working to screw up their international effect."

Katie Hunter

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, by journalist-turned-epidemiologist Elisabeth Pisani. Pisani explores the seamy underbelly of Asia to record data on the terrible disease and its transmission, challenging conventional wisdom on everything from the poverty-AIDS link to the role of NGOs and governments in stopping the virus's spread. The book will make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about HIV/AIDS.

Joshua Keating

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia. In this engaging travelogue, Tom Bissel explores Uzbekistan, the country where he had an emotional breakdown as a Peace Corps volunteer years earlier, and reports on the vanishing Aral Sea.