Weekly newsletter 79
A selection of our best article links of the week, plus featured FiveBooks interviews, videos, quotations and more.
(http://thebrowser.com)
Weekly Newsletter
Best of the Week
The Luxury Repo Men
Matthew Teague | Businessweek | 25 October 2012
The rich have money troubles too, sometimes. Or maybe they're just not as rich as they appeared. In which case, if you're a bank, you send for Ken Cage. He recovers yachts, personal jets and racehorses from the overleveraged Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/luxury-repo-men)
Faces, Places, Spaces
Adam Gopnik | New Yorker | 22 October 2012
Historians and military strategists develop new respect for geography after bungled invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan. "Our desires as nations, like our desires as individuals, are rooted in the unchanging features of our terrain" Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/faces-places-spaces)
The Billionaires Next Door
Chrystia Freeland | Reuters | 15 October 2012
The very rich are different, and not only because they have more money. They are insulated, arrogant, hypocritical, prone to paranoia, indifferent to the misfortunes of others, and convinced of their own special virtue Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/billionaires-next-door)
He's Behind You
Adam Curtis | BBC | 21 October 2012
Subtitle: How Colonel Gaddafi and the Western establishment together created a pantomime world. Gaddafi was both baddie and goodie at different times, and he was happy to play along, as Curtis, in his inimitable style, explains Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/hes-behind-you)
Are Capitalism And Democracy Failing Us?
Raghuram Rajan | Fault Lines | 19 October 2012
"There are two important challenges to the legitimacy of capitalism in the West today. First, it no longer seems to provide equal opportunity to all. A second big challenge is the coming selective enforcement of property rights" Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/are-capitalism-and-democracy-failing-us)
What Can You Really Know?
Freeman Dyson | NYRB | 18 October 2012
"For most of the 25 centuries since written history began, philosophers were important. They had a deep influence in the worlds of politics and morality as well as in science and scholarship." Not any more. But why not? Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/what-can-you-really-know)
The Unnatural: Bobby Fischer
Jonathan Safran Foer | Slate | 24 October 2012
"He worked harder than any of his peers. He attempted to conceal his insecurity behind an ego built for 20, and his self-love behind self-hatred behind self-love. And perhaps more than any human who has ever lived, he kvetched" Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/unnatural-bobby-fischer)
Paradise With An Asterisk
SC Gwynne | Outside | 17 October 2012
Visit to Bikini Atoll. Tiny ring of islands in middle of the Pacific; stunningly beautiful; site of US nuclear bomb tests. Long-term effect of fallout wasn't understood; Bikinian people were sent into nuclear exile; lives ruined Comments (http://thebrowser.com/articles/paradise-asterisk)
(http://www.amazon.com/Best-of-FiveBooks-2011-ebook/dp/B007GAM6RC?tag=thebro-21)
FiveBooks Interview
(http://thebrowser.com/interviews/joshua-foer-on-memory)
Joshua Foer on Memory
The best-selling author and 2006 US Memory Champion picks five unforgettable books about the art of remembering Read on (http://thebrowser.com/interviews/joshua-foer-on-memory)
Featured Topic
(http://thebrowser.com/reports/behavioural-economics)
Behavioural Economics
How do cognitive and emotional factors affect our understanding of economic decisions? The field of behavioural economics attempts to explain Read on (http://thebrowser.com/reports/behavioural-economics)
Reader Recommendations
@nuzav (http://twitter.com/nuzav) What Moderation Means t.co/kMymEHbK #browsings (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#browsings) More like this (http://thebrowser.com/browsings)
Book of the Week
Book of the Day (http://thebrowser.com/recommended/i-go-sleep-by-sj-watson)
Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Tess Gerritsen says (http://thebrowser.com/interviews/tess-gerritsen-on-favourite-thrillers) : “This is a domestic thriller, by a man writing from a female point of view. He had me convinced from the first paragraph” FiveBooks Archive (http://thebrowser.com/fivebooks)
Video of the Week
Sean Carroll – From Particles To People
(http://thebrowser.com/videos/sean-carroll-–-particles-people)
How do we know what we think we know about how the world works?
More videos (http://thebrowser.com/videos)
Quote of the Week
Henry Sidgwick, on democracy (http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-What-Matters-Berkeley-Lectures/dp/0199572801)
"It would be ridiculous to say that a man has assented to a law passed by a mere majority of an assembly against one member of which he has voted"
More quotes (http://thebrowser.com/quotations)