Books

A Curious Spat Over Russian Expat Journalism

by Joshua Foust

Steve LeVine’s last book, Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia—very favorably reviewed in this space—took a very thorough drubbing in the Virginia Quarterly Review by journalist Stephen Boykewich. What were LeVine’s crimes? The logical question would seem to be what LeVine’s book, which weighs in at a mere 166 [...]

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oh Jesus

by Joshua Foust

I missed one new blog Foreign Policy is adding to its roster: The Call, by the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer. So is running a successful scam, little more than a left-of-center version of Stratfor, now the only requirement for being taken seriously? Bremmer, recall, is the author of The J Curve: A New Way to [...]

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The Book of Revelations

by Joshua Foust

Nathan Hodge is all a-wowza over Ken Silverstein’s book length padded magazine essay about lobbyists in the DC. Really. What a stunning revelation, that lobbyists are corrupt and there is fraud in Defense appropriations. I mean, does he count on his readers (either author, in fact) never reading a newspaper or magazine? Aside, perhaps, from [...]

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Horton Heard A Who?

by Joshua Foust

I’ve been putting off buying Ahmed Rashid’s latest polemic on Afghanistan (he covers Central Asia about as much as I do). It’s not that I don’t think it’s any good, though like Jihad it easily could be an over-praised piece of crap, nor is it that I’m necessarily tired of his galling racism that goes [...]

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Koran, Kalashnikov, & Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan, by Antonio Giustozzi

by Joshua Foust

Given the current trendy thinking in counterinsurgency circles, Giustozzi was bound to make a splash by trying to catalogue the resurrection of the Taliban in 2002-3 and how it came to dominate swaths of Afghanistan in 2006-7. In a broad sense, he does an admirable job of doing exactly that—by tracking the pathetic record of [...]

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A Day for Чыңгыз Айтматов

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Today is a fine day for celebrating Central Asian culture. I had real Uzbek plov for lunch, and Kazakh language classes like I have everyday, after which I had a chance to speak with some Turkmen and Uyghur teachers, and now I’m all set to review some of the work of Kyrgyzstan’s greatest literary figure [...]

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The Khyber Pass: A History of Empire & Invasion, by Paddy Docherty

by Joshua Foust

This book was written entirely in the passive voice. The passive voice was used to avoid assigning causation or personhood to various events. As a result, we learn that places were invaded, people were slaughtered, armies were founded, but no one can say by whom. Good grief, that is exhausting. How is it a book [...]

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Apples are from Kazakhstan, a Review

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Here follows my review of Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins. This book was informative, but precious little of the information was first-hand knowledge. My primary complaint is that the reader is really taken on a ride as Christopher Robbins tells us other people’s stories. This is fine in fiction, [...]

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Russia’s Long Descent Into Madness: Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya, and Putin’s Labyrinth by Steve LeVine

by Joshua Foust

Over the last ten years, Russia has emerged from one of the unfortunate victims of the 1998 financial crisis to become a strong, almost fearsomely assertive country. Much of this is thanks to Vladimir Putin, a man who has won and maintained near mythical popularity by doing his best to “make Russia strong.” While this [...]

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Last Respects

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Read the obituary at Global Voices Online. Chingiz Aitmatov {Чыңгыз Айтматов} passed away this week in Nuremberg, Germany. On May 16th, Aitmatov suffered kidney failure. His health steadily declined, and he was reportedly in a coma before he passed on June 10th. His funeral was held yesterday, June 14th, in Bishkek. Thousands came to view [...]

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