1 Security, by Stephen Amidon. A finely written novel of paranoia and the creeping, insidious dangers of allowing the post-9/11 mindset to invade all aspects of life. Set in small-town Massachusetts, the book explores the many divisions and contradictions of modern American life, some subtle, some overt. Amidon, who spent years in London moonlighting at the FT's weekend movie reviewer, has a fantastic feel for pace and plot. Yet he manages to resist cheap pyrotechnics and to lace the book with a cool, clear-eyed intellectualism that is the antithesis of everything the Bush years stood for.

2 The Baltic Meltdown: A nice look by the smart young David L. Stern at the worst case scenario for the Baltics should Europe decide, as it has in the past, to abandon these mini-democracies to their (eastern) fate.

3 In Green Jobs, for Harvard's Belfer Center, Robert Stavins weighs the policy-aim of creating jobs that are environmentally friendly, and so doing "double duty" with Obama's stimulus. The "wins" turn out to be mostly illusory. (One of my CFR.org staff writers, Toni Johnson, made the same point in a more balanced presentation two weeks ago.) The problem, more forthrightly faced by Johnson, is that many "green jobs" will merely displace jobs in the old "non-green" economy. So, yes, they advance a policy goal. But, no, they do not amount to a green version of the peace dividend.