Books we're reading this month

The Dust of Empire: The race for mastery in the Asian heartland, by Karl E Meyer (Century Foundation, 2003)

This rollicking romp around the most mystifying neighbourhood on the planet smuggles in a powerful subtext: the US is making serious, costly, and irreversible mistakes in its clumsy and ahistorical bull-in-a-china-shop presence there. I’m almost positive all this will someday matter to more than just crusty authors and obscure publishers.

- Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

The Free Nation Deep in Debt: The financial roots of democracy, by James MacDonald (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003)

Stop the presses! A genuine news flash! The need for governments to go into debt is the reason modern democracy arose. State borrowing through bond issues sold to the public bound the state to public assessments of its performance with that borrowed money.

I’m reading this thick tome and I’m thinking: Hang on, can it really be as simple as that? How come nobody has ever mentioned this numbingly simple fact before? Am I the only one who didn’t know this?

- Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>