The Smithian

…this ideology is a paradoxical fusion of the freewheeling sensibilities exemplified by the New Left hippies and the capitalistic drive of the neoliberal New Right, with digital technologies serving as the binding agent.

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The author has delivered a blow-by-blow account of the tawdry compromises, Republican intractability and factional fighting within the Democratic Party…Congress comes across as the nation’s grandfather: antiquated, inconsistent, as slow-moving as it is dull-witted.

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Anyone openly seeking vengeance is unfairly dismissed in the legal system as irrational, unreliable and somewhat unhinged. Rosenbaum convincingly argues for knocking down the false distinction between justice and revenge, for rescuing revenge from its taboo status.

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This is a strange book.

Should Google compensate us for our searches? Should Amazon pay us for the books we buy? They should, because they are using us to expand their databases and hone their algorithms—and, eventually, steal our jobs. This is the startling argument advanced by Jaron Lanier…

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Many…have written about how global warming will damage some of the world’s most treasured landscapes and beloved species. This book aims to lay out exactly how bad it will be for human beings.

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Rosie, it turns out, did much more than drive rivets.

“The post-presidency has evolved since World War II into a big business…”

…perceptively ties…events together and paints the larger picture: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America has gradually developed a new way of war, one that thoroughly relies on secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. It “is now easier,” Mazzetti writes, “for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any time in its history.”

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…there are innumerable stellar works about the history of race relations in Boston. Indeed, eye-openers like Common Ground, the Pulitzer Prize-winning integration saga by J. Anthony Lukas, should be mandatory reading…

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While apologists…may have seen Whitey as “a bad good guy,”  Cullen and Murphy paint a different picture. He did not keep drugs out of Southie. He extorted money from dope dealers. He is charged with killing fellow gangsters and innocent bystanders alike. We are not talking Robin Hood here.

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…Becker crisscrossed the globe, from the beaches of Sri Lanka to the game reserves of sub-Saharan Africa, from the vineyards of France to America’s national parks, measuring the impact of the tourist trade. And while she finds plenty of inspiring examples of wise governance and corporate responsibility, in many other cases greed and shortsightedness have ruined once-pristine environments, exacerbated human misery and destroyed the spontaneity that once made travel an adventure.

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Most hospitality workers—especially those at high end hotels—routinely interact with people with significantly more economic resources than they.  This is an interesting point of contact analyzed exquisitely by Rachel Sherman…

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…demonstrates how the American people overwhelmingly view their southern neighbor through the dire lens of poverty, corruption, and violence. However: “Mexico’s real story today is one of fundamental political, economic, and social transformation: from authoritarianism to democracy, from a closed to an open economy, and from a poor society to a middle class nation.”

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