The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State

By Elizabeth Economy

Xi Jinping has been at the helm of a third revolution in the evolution of the Chinese State, the first two revolutions being the communist revolution in 1949 and the reforms started under the rule of Deng Xiaoping starting in the late 1970s. In some sense it is two separate trends, the re-centralization of power and authority in the central government which is largely an undoing of the decentralization under Deng Xiaoping and his successors and China stepping into a more assertive role on the world stage. The latter is in many ways the more revolutionary process as it breaks a long tradition of explicitly avoiding foreign enanglements. The anlysis is in many ways quite bearish on China. It is very clear-headed about the fact that the policies coming out of the central government in Beijing are at best haphazardly implemented and oftern with very mixed results.

MBS

By Ben Hubbard

Continuing on with my dictator kick, this is the story of the rise of Muhammed bin Salman, defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Really, deeply chilling. His gesture towards liberalization (removing the ban on woman driving, allowing more entertainment) are largely window dressing. He has demonstrated consistently authoritarian instincts and systematically dismantled the informal structures in Saudi government and society which protected (in a very inconsistent way) from the sort of arbitrary and capricious exercises of power is now indulging in. And it's not clear that his grand vision is any more than consultant-speak bullshit and Saudi Arabia lacks the state capacity to execute serious reform anyway.

Rethinking Conciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience

By Michael A Graziano

Yet another grand unified theory of conciousness from a neuroscientist. The twist here is that Graziano claims to solve the “hard problem” of conciousness, our subjective experience of being conscious. I ended up putting it down about a third of the way through because I didn't feel like I was really groking the content.

Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard

By Clare Carlisle

I honestly didn't make it very far. The book is exceptionally well written but in the end I couldn't really bring myself to care about the birographical details of Kierkegaard's life.

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

By George Packer

Man oh man, I read this one from cover to cover (all 556 pages of it) in pretty short order. I've always really enjoyed George Packer's prose style and this one didn't dissapoint in that regard. But more than the style, the framing of the story and the content itself was very masterfully laid out. As you might surmise from the title, Holbrooke and the details of his life, are a sort of synechdoche for America and it's role in the world from the Vietname era to the present. Boisterous, occassionally brilliant, nakedly ambitious and shockingly un self-aware. We can point to concrete achievements and most likely on the margin we (and him) were an improvement, but the whole still feels somewhat scummy. The conscience is a luxury that can only be indulged once power is secured. But it's not always clear that power is the end in itself. Maybe it is a means to do real good. It certainly seems like that at times. Other times not so much….