Showing results by narrator "Kevin-Stillwell" in All Categories

Jack Carney’s life is unexpectedly put on hold. He is not a criminal lawyer, but his friend needs help. He remembers his time in Japan flying covert missions against the Russians. What would his flight crew think of him now? By comparison, his legal career lacks purpose. If he defends Connor, there will be consequences. His firm does not allow involvement in criminal cases.

A brilliant, original exploration of how the CBD revolution is going to transform Americans’ lives. We are an anxious and uptight nation on the brink, divided by a broken political system and a president who is pushing us over the edge. Many of us are agitated about terrorism, guns, religious fundamentalism, and refugees.

The anger of less educated white voters in rural and exurban areas that Trump tapped into so effectively has been building for half a century. Its roots lie in Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and only by understanding the mistakes made in that war can politicians hope to heal the country’s wounds.

Donald Trump’s admirers and critics would probably agree on one thing: he is different. One of his chief Republican supporters, Newt Gingrich, describes him as a "unique, extraordinary experience." And of course, in some ways - his celebrity, his flexibility with the facts - Trump is unusual. But in an important sense, he is not: Trump is part of a broad populist upsurge running through the Western world. It can be seen in countries of widely varying circumstances, from prosperous Sweden to crisis-ridden Greece.

Although today’s right-wing populists share some similarities with the interwar fascists, the differences are more significant. And more important, what today’s comparisons often fail to explain is how noxious politicians and parties grow into the type of revolutionary movements capable of fundamentally threatening democracy, as interwar fascism did.

For half a millennium, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass. By 1900, it was the world’s fourth or fifth-largest industrial power and the largest agricultural producer in Europe.

The year is 2018. The United States has finally emerged from the previous decade's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession that threatened to tear the country apart. Eighteen months into his first term, President Tom Knowles sees a chance to put his stamp on world affairs when 32 American aid workers are massacred in Uganda by a group of rebel partisans. Knowles decides to send in troops into an area that China considers its African sphere of influence.

The Tea Party and its European cousins have emerged from the enduring inability of democratic governments to satisfy their citizens' needs. Today’s populist movements won’t subside until the legitimate grievances driving them have been addressed.

In Mr.Tall, his first story collection in two decades, Tony Earley brings us seven rueful, bittersweet, riotous studies of characters both ordinary and mythical, seeking to make sense of the world transforming around them. He demonstrates once again the prodigious storytelling gifts that have...

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.

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.

To create broad-based and sustainable economic growth, governments in the developing world should foster market-creating innovation - that is, the generation of new products and services that reach an entirely new population of customers.

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.

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.

The crisis in Ukraine has pushed Moscow and the West into a new Cold War. For both sides, the top priority must now be to contain the conflict, ensuring that it ends up being as short and as shallow as possible.

In assembling an international coalition to combat ISIS, the United States has looked mostly to the Middle East and Europe, regions that it said face a direct threat from the militant Islamist group. But other parts of the world are just as anxious about ISIS - above all, Southeast Asia.

A successful right-wing campaign in India to suppress the work of Wendi Doniger, a prominent scholar of Hinduism, suggests that conservative voices are gaining the upper hand in the country’s long struggle between secular liberalism and religious nationalism.

U.S. and European officials need to understand how Russia really thinks about foreign policy. To resolve the Ukraine crisis and prevent similar ones from occurring in the future, they need to get better at putting themselves in Moscow's shoes.

What's fascinating about Dani Shapiro's story "Supernova" is "its focus on the minor catastrophe that is Shenkman, a relatively prosperous man whose minor shortcomings feel, to him alone, monumental and impossible to overlook," writes Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "Despite rowing every day, obsessively racing against an old rival in a computerized simulation, nobody even knows Shenkman is still competing."

United States president Steve Wade believes his latest affair, with the beautiful Lucia Benoni, is a secret. When Lucia is murdered under mysterious circumstances, FBI agent Kelly Smith is called to investigate. As he dives deeper into the case, he uncovers links between Lucia, a hostile foreign power, a group of vicious white supremacists, and a shadowy high-placed Washington figure known only as “Fox.”