19 Themes from Journal of International Affairs

1. Fall/Winter 2015 – Breaking Point: Protests and Revolutions in the 21st Century
2. Spring/Summer 2014 – Global Food Security
3. Fall/Winter 2013 – The Gender Issue: Beyond Exclusion
4. Spring/Summer 2013 – The Rise of Latin America
5. Fall/Winter 2012 – Transnational Organized Crime
6. Spring/Summer 2012 – The Future of the City
7. Fall/Winter 2011 – Inside the Authoritarian State
8. Spring/Summer 2011 – Sino-Indian Relations
9. Fall/Winter 2010 – Innovating for Development
10. Spring/Summer 2010 – Rethinking Russia
11. Fall/Winter 2009 – Pakistan and Afghanistan: Domestic Pressures and Regional Threats
12. Spring/Summer 2009 – Africa in the 21st Century
13. Fall/Winter 2008 – Global Finance
14. Spring/Summer 2008 – Water: A Global Challenge
15. Fall/Winter 2007 – Religion & Statecraft
16. Spring/Summer 2007 – Iran
17. Fall/Winter 2006 – Historical Reconciliation
18. Spring/Summer 2006 – The Globalization of Disaster
19. Fall/Winter 2005 – The Politics of the Sea: Regulating Stateless Space

6 Scary Book Selections to Read from Library for September 2015

1. Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS

2. The Demographic Cliff: How To Survive And Prosper During The Great Deflation Of 2014-2019

Chapter 1	The Demographic Cliff Around the World
Chapter 2	Following Japan into a Coma Economy
Chapter 3	Why Real Estate Will Never Be the Same
Chapter 4	A Look at Public and Private Debt
Chapter 5	A Brief History of Financial Bubbles
Chapter 6	Commodity Prices: The Achilles’ Heel of Emerging Countries
Chapter 7	Investment Strategies for the Financial Crisis Ahead
Chapter 8	Business Strategies for the Winter Season
Chapter 9	Government Strategies for Facilitating Free Markets
Epilogue:	A Major Revolution Brews Every 250 Years

3. Humans Are Underrated by Geoff Colvin

• The Cleveland Clinic, which emphasizes empathy training of doctors and all employees to improve patient outcomes and lower medical costs.
• The U.S. Army, which has revolutionized its training to focus on human interaction, leading to stronger teams and greater success in real-world missions.
• Stanford Business School, which has overhauled its curriculum to teach interpersonal skills through human-to-human experiences.

4. The State We’re In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie

• NY Times
• SF Gate
• Boston Globe
• Vogue

5. A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design by Frank Wilczek: History of mathematics

• Guardian
• FT
• PBS Nova Next “How Physics Will Change—and Change the World—in 100 Years”
• Slate

6. Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties by Patricia Marx

 

National Book Critics Circle Finalists – 2014

Source: National Book Critics Circle: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE ANNOUNCES FINALISTS; Sandrof Award to Toni Morrison – Critical Mass Blog

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

1. Blake Bailey, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait (W.W. Norton & Co.)
2. Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury)
3. Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side (Tin House)
4. Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure (Random House)
5. Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not (Metropolitan Books)

 

BIOGRAPHY

1. Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life (W.W. Norton & Co.)
2. S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (Scribner)
3. John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Co.)
4. Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
5. Miriam Pawel, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (Bloomsbury)

 

CRITICISM

1. Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Innoculation (Graywolf Press)
2. Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty (Graywolf Press)
3. Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
4. Lynne Tillman, What Would Lynne Tillman Do? (Red Lemonade)
5. Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz (University of Minnesota Press)

 

FICTION

1. Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press)
2. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books)
3. Lily King, Euphoria (Atlantic Monthly Press)
4. Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books)
5. Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

 

GENERAL NONFICTION

1. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (Alfred A. Knopf)
2. Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book (Pantheon)
3. Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt & Co.)
4. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
5. Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

POETRY

1. Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press)
2. Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Books)
3. Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
4. Christian Wiman, Once in the West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
5. Jake Adam York, Abide (Southern Illinois University Press)

 

NONA BALAKIAN CITATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN REVIEWING: Alexandra Schwartz

JOHN LEONARD PRIZE: Phil Klay, Redeployment (Penguin Press)

 

2014 Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships: Author Recognitions by NYRB

Source: Literary Awards by Year – Lannan Foundation

1. Steve Erickson, 2014, Award, Lifetime
2. Mitchell S. Jackson, 2014, Fellowship, Fiction
3. Adrian Matejka, 2014, Fellowship, Poetry
4. Jamaal May, 2014, Fellowship, Poetry
5. Jill McDonough, 2014, Fellowship, Poetry
6. Claudia Rankine, 2014, Award, Poetry
7. Joseph Stroud, 2014, Award, Lifetime

Cultural Freedom awards and fellowships

• Bryan Stevenson, Cultural Freedom Prize
• Max Blumenthal awarded 2014 Cultural Freedom Award for An Especially Notable Book
• Dave Zirin awarded 2014 Cultural Freedom Fellowship
• Alexis Bonogofsky awarded 2014 Cultural Freedom Fellowship

9 Foreign Terrorist Organizations that should NOT be there in the USA Terrorism Watch

Source: When is a terrorist no longer a terrorist? | FP Passport

• The Abu Nidal Organization — a PLO splinter group — was a major terrorist organization in the 1980s and 1990s, but has barely been heard from since Abu Nidal’s death in 2002.

 

• Aum Shinriyko, the Japanese cult that carried out the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, hasn’t carried out any attacks since.

 

• ETA — the decades-old Basque nationalist group, is thought to have fewer than 100 active members since hundreds were arrested by French and Spanich police, and hasn’t carried out a major attack since 2009.

 

• The Continuity Irish Republican Army may have fewer than 50 members, and these days spends more time on political infighting than planning attacks.

 

• Gama’a al-Islamiyya  was once Egypt’s largest terrorist group and it’s former spiritual leader, “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdul Rahman is in jail in the U.S. for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, but the group has largely renounced violence since the early 2000s and now has its own political party with seats in the Egyptian parliament.

 

• The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were decimated by a Sri Lankan army offensive in 2009 and despite reports of regrouping abroad, the Tigers haven’t been able to mount any major operations since.

 

• The Morrocan Islamic Combatant Group was one of the organizations implicated in the 2004 Madrid train bombings but hasn’t been heard from since.

 

• Revolutionary Organization 17 November,  a leftist Greek militant group that targed U.S. and NATO targets in the 1980s and ’90s, hasn’t carried out any attacks since 2002.

 

• United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — a right-wing paramilitary anti-FARC group — was mostly demobilized in 2010 and the elements of it that remain are more of a drug trafficking organization than a terrorist militia.

Noted Tamil Writer Nanjil Nadan in New York City: நியு யார்க் நகரில் நாஞ்சில் நாடன்

நன்றி: அமெரிக்காவில் நாஞ்சில் நாடன்

Top 10 SuperZIPs

Thanks: Charles Murray on the New American Divide – WSJ.com

In ‘Coming Apart,’ Charles Murray identifies 882 ‘SuperZIPs,’ ZIP Codes where residents score in the 95th through the 99th percentile on a combined measure of income and education, based on the 2000 census. Here are the top-ranked areas:

1. 60043: Kenilworth, Ill. (Chicago’s North Shore)
2. 60022: Glencoe, Ill. (Chicago’s North Shore)
3. 07078: Short Hills, N.J. (New York metro area)
4. 94027: Atherton, Calif. (San Francisco-San Jose corridor)
5. 10514: Chappaqua, N.Y. (New York metro area)
6. 19035: Gladwyne, Pa. (Philadelphia’s Main Line)
7. 94028: Portola Valley, Calif. (S.F.-San Jose corridor)
8. 92067: Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. (San Diego suburbs)
9. 02493: Weston, Mass. (Boston suburbs)
10. 10577: Purchase, N.Y. (New York metro area

Writer, Filmmaker & the Argumentative Tamilan Gnani in New York/NJ

Thanks: Elavasam