Dave Eggers — What is the What
I’ve had a really hard time understanding the Sudan conflict, and I don’t think it’s due to a lack of effort on my part. Media coverage is sporadic and often betrays biases and the issues themselves are muddled by too many groups with too many competing interests. Reading a linear narrative of one Lost Boy’s [...]
Steve Almond — The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories
Pretty much the best short stories ever. It doesn’t feel like reading the same story over and over again at all. Each is unique and way too much fun.
Jeff Hawkins — On Intelligence
Yeah. Brains are cool. It’s neat to read about an elegant and fully integrated theory on human intelligence. Plus it’s very approachable. “You can be intelligent just lying in the dark, thinking and understanding.” “The brain uses the same process to see as to hear. The cortex does something universal that can be applied to [...]
William Easterly — The White Man’s Burden
Lately, there have been a lot of fancy summits and conferences on AIDS, poverty, globalization, global warming… but it seems like most of those areas are in the midst of crisis rather than in recovery. The summits, the lofty goals, the thousand page manuals don’t make people richer and healthier in and of themselves. For [...]
Peter Singer — One World.
It seems super important to always consider the impact of what I’m doing on others. One of the things I’m becoming way too acutely aware of is that I can’t just look at the people directly within my circle of influence but rather have to take a huge step back and think of global repercussions. [...]
Carolyn Nordstrom — Shadows of War
Of course, I'm far from the only person with a sneaking suspicion that many wars are encouraged by a political machine driven by profit. Diving into the world of war-time extralegal economies not only went a lot way in confirming my suspicions but also provided tremendous insight into the economic workings of the world's poorest [...]
Roger Gottlieb — A Spirituality of Resistance
I believe in a “horizontal” kind of approach to spirituality where closeness is established not with some sort of supreme, distant being, but with tangible entities around me, as equals. I don't really like the idea of disguising suffering and hardship as contributing to some ultimate goal or looking to the promise of some other, [...]
Stéphane Bourguignon — Le Principe du geyser
B'en… c'est prenant. Le genre de livre que je ne peux pas déposer pour plus de 30 secondes et que je termine en quelques heures. Mais en fin de compte c'est un peu vide. Même pornographique par bouts et je me suis beaucoup moins attaché aux personnages que dans L'Avaleur de sable. Ils pourraient pas [...]
Trinie Dalton — Wide Eyed
Hey, that's right… I'm a woman. I have very different sensibilities than a lot of my friends — men. Seriously, I think I'd forgotten. Disillusionment, sensuality, nurturing, sleepovers with scary movies… maybe it's because I'm really trying to find myself again, but this, to me, was some wacky celebration of femininity — the pity for [...]
