The FPA’s Must Reads (January 25 – January 31)

The Littlest Boy
Foreign Policy
By Adam Rawnsley and David Brown

In the the 1950s and 1960s, the United States began developing increasingly smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons. The final result was a literally a nuclear weapon in a backpack that could be carried by an individual soldier on foot. Rawnsley and Brown tell the bizarre story of the almost unimaginable strategic thinking that produced the program and the men that trained to deliver these weapons.

Digging for their lives: Russia’s volunteer body hunters
BBC News Magazine
By Lucy Ash

In the forests near Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, volunteers have unearthed more than half a million unburied soldiers from the Second World War. Despite the passage of nearly 70 years since the end of the war, the rediscovery of these men continues to shape not only the lives of their families, but the national identity of a conflicted country.

Guest Workers
National Geographic
By Cynthia Gorney

Over two million Filipinos work in the Middle East, millions more in other regions around the world. Gorney constructs an intimate profile of one such couple living in Dubai, and the difficult choices they have had to make for their family.

“Most Well-Known and Beloved Chinese Role Model”
New York Magazine
By Jessica Pressler

Jessica Pressler meets with the eccentric and wily Chinese tycoon Chen Guangbiao that has made it his mission to promote himself and his goal of buying The New York Times. Although Guangbiao has yet to make any real headway, and although it is uncertain how close he is to the Chinese government, his bid to acquire the newspaper is part of a very real and widespread campaign to increase Chinese involvement in Western media.

Our Man in Africa
Foreign Policy
By Michael Bronner

In 1982, Hissène Habré seized power in Chad and quickly forged an alliance with the President Reagan and the United States by opposing Ghaddafi’s Libya. His rule, which lasted until 1990, was marked by thousands of killings, tortures, and other human rights abuses. Bronner chronicles the years of struggle by Reed Brody and other human rights activists to finally bring Habré to trial in 2013.

Blogs:

Defending Gold and Ourselves: Terrorism and Putin’s Strained Olympic Games by Sara Chupein-Soroka
Jordanian Palestinian pro-democracy activist: “Kerry’s peace plan is unrealistic” by Rachel Avraham
Europe Keeps “Talking Turkey”; Is Turkey Listening? by Michael Crowley
U.S. Trade Policy Should Give First Priority to WTO Agreements by George Paik
Four things the SOTU missed: Defense edition by Hannah Gais

Podcasts:

Mark Zandi on U.S. trade and economic statecraft hosted by Sarwar Kashmeri