Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

It is hard to overstate the degree to which China has been transformed in recent decades. Between 1959 and 1961, tens of millions of Chinese starved to death in the Great Famine. Today, China boasts the world’s second-largest economy. The country has virtually eliminated severe poverty among its citizens, a burgeoning middle class thrives in ever-expanding cities, and hundreds of Chinese citizens have become billionaires. Human history offers no other socioeconomic shift of equivalent magnitude.

In 1900, in his “Address to the Nations of the World” at the first Pan-African Conference, in London, W. E. B. Du Bois proclaimed that the “problem of the 20th century” was “the problem of the color-line, the question as to how far differences of race - which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair - will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.”

Today, orphanages are common in many parts of the world. But a look at young people who spent their childhoods in institutions in Romania reveals just how developmentally damaging such places can be.

Two years ago, I argued in these pages that America was suffering from political decay. The country’s constitutional system of checks and balances, combined with partisan polarization and the rise of well-financed interest groups, had combined to yield what I labeled “vetocracy,” a situation in which it was easier to stop government from doing things than it was to use government to promote the common good.

On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets, demanding an end to the nearly 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Eighteen days later, Mubarak stepped down. In Tahrir Square, the crowds cried, "Lift your head high, you’re an Egyptian." Today, such pride and hope are a distant memory.

Machines are substituting for more types of human labor than ever before. This means that the real winners of the future will be neither the providers of cheap labor nor the owners of ordinary capital, but rather those who can innovate and create new products, services, and business models.

Donald Trump is an unlikely populist. The Republican nominee for US president inherited a fortune, boasts about his wealth and his many properties, shuttles between his exclusive resorts and luxury hotels, and has adopted an economic plan that would, among other things, slash tax rates for rich people like himself. But a politician does not have to live among people of modest means, or even tout policies that would boost their incomes, to articulate their grievances and gain their support.

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, talks to Foreign Affairs about the court’s achievements and challenges, why so few people have been convicted, and whether the court has a bias towards African cases.

Léon Blum and French anti-semitism.

In 1971, the Pakistani government orchestrated a brutal military crackdown against the Bengali population in East Pakistan - while the United States stuck by its ally Pakistan. Gary Bass' new book spotlights the "significant complicity" of U.S. President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, in this "forgotten genocide".

In this slim memoir, Theodor Kallifatides explores the interplay of meaningful living and meaningful work, and the timeless question of how to reconcile oneself to aging. But he also comments on worrying trends in contemporary Europe - from religious intolerance and prejudice against immigrants to housing crises and gentrification - and his sadness at the battered state of his beloved Greece. Kallifatides offers an eloquent, thought-provoking meditation on the writing life, and an author’s place in a changing world.

More than 13 years after 9/11, the Afghan war is far from over, even if Washington insists that the U.S. role in it will soon come to an end. Three recent books help explain why, and what Washington needs to do next to protect the gains that have been made.

During the early Cold War, the Dulles and Bundy brothers played critical roles in shaping U.S. foreign policy. New biographies make clear that the all four men had some common ideological blindspots. But how much of their worldview and behavior can be attributed to their WASP establishment backgrounds is an open question.

As China asserts itself in its nearby seas and Russia wages war in Syria and Ukraine, it is easy to assume that Eurasia’s two great land powers are showing signs of newfound strength. But the opposite is true: increasingly, China and Russia flex their muscles not because they are powerful but because they are weak. Unlike Nazi Germany, whose power at home in the 1930s fueled its military aggression abroad, today’s revisionist powers are experiencing the reverse phenomenon.

Four months into his presidency, at a summit in Prague, Barack Obama pledged to take “concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” Yet nearly eight years later, he presides over a program to modernize the entire US nuclear arsenal at a cost of $35 billion a year through the next decade and beyond. To those who accuse him of hypocrisy, Obama has said that he always regarded a nuclear-free world as a long-term goal, unlikely to be met in his lifetime, much less his time in office.

Lawrence Freedman’s massive, ambitious new audiobook, Strategy, offers a personal take on an important term, one so overused that it has become almost meaningless.

Ever since 9/11, the United States has provided Pakistan with a steady supply of security and nonsecurity assistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used to seem invincible. Today, he and his regime look enervated, confused, and desperate. Increasingly, both Russian and Western commentators suggest that Russia may be on the verge of deep instability, possibly even collapse.

Although rumors of the death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar have circulated for years - rumors that the Afghan National Directorate of Security even confirmed several times, first in classified communications with its allies and then in a December 2014 public statement - it was only on July 29, 2015, that the Afghan and US governments affirmed that he had died.

When marriages, friendships, and families come undone, to what lengths do we go to keep it all together? That question lies at the heart of Brendan Mathews's buoyant and unforgettable debut collection of moving and darkly witty stories. From rock-star flameouts to church burnings to ordinary people trying not to fall out of love, these stories are packed with vivid detail, emotional precision, and deft, redemptive humor.