Below is a small sampling of recent CUP titles that address current events:
Afghanistan:
My Life with the Taliban is the autobiography of Taliban official Abdul Salam Zaeef. It is one of the few first-hand accounts of Afghan history from the past thirty years. In 1983, Zaeef joined the jihad against the Soviets, fighting alongside several major figures of the anti-Soviet resistance, including current Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Zaeef served as ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11, and his testimony sheds light on the "phoney war" that preceeded the U.S.-led intervention. In 2002, Zaeef was delivered to the American forces operating in Pakistan and spent four and a half years in prison, including several years in Guantanamo, before being released without trial or charge. His reflections offer a privileged look at the communities that form the bedrock of the Taliban and the forces that motivate men like Zaeef to fight.
Here is a video with the editors of My Life with the Taliban, talking about the book and Zaeef's extraordinary story:
Decoding the New Taliban, edited by Antonio Giustozzi includes contributions from leading experts examining the insurgency's latest developments.
In Empires of Mud: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007, Giustozzi looks at the recent history of warlords trying to assert their power in Afghanistan.
Health Care
Health at Risk: America’s Ailing Health System—and How to Heal It, edited by Jacob Hacker, includes perspectives from the nation's leading advisors on health policy and financing appraise America's ailing healthcare system and suggest reasonable approaches to its rehabilitation. Each chapter confronts a major challenge to the country's health security, from runaway costs and uneven quality of care to declining levels of insurance coverage, medical bankruptcy, and the growing enthusiasm for health plans that put patients in charge of risk and cost.
R. Glenn Hubbard, author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that Obama is making the same mistakes in his efforts to reform health care that George W. Bush made during his attempt to overhaul Social Security.
The Economy
401-K's are plummeting and more people than ever are worried about what they once saw as their secure retirement funds and pensions.
Pensions, Social Security, and the Privatization of Risk, edited by Mitchell Orenstein, brings together leading experts to offer a clear account and reasoned analysis of the looming crisis, as well as our collective alternatives both domestically and abroad.
To read an interview with Mitchell Orenstein.
With economic and finanical news making headlines everyday (if not, every hour), The Economists' Voice: Top EconomistsTake on Today's Problems offers important insight and analysis to the current finanical crisis and beyond.
Of particular interest considering recent events are the book's final three essays, which examine the roots and potential danger of the housing crises: "The Menace of an Unchecked Housing Bubble," by Dean Baker; Robert J. Shiller’s “Long-Term Perspectives on the Current Boom in Home Prices,” in which he argues for new risk management tools for real estate and Edward L. Glaeser and Dwight M. Jaffee’s “What to Do About Fannie and Freddie.”
The volume brings together leading thinkers to consider a wide variety of issues, including the fragile real estate market, the economics of the Iraq War, global warming, the federal deficit, the future of social security, tax reform, and the death penalty. Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Kenneth Arrow, Robert H. Frank, Rebecca Blank, Richard Posner, Gary Becker, and others contribute.
You can also read Joseph Stiglitz's article in The Economists' Voice, The High Cost of the Iraq War.
The Vaccine Controversy
For years Dr. Paul Offit has been pointing to the scientific evidence that shows that vaccines do not cause childhood autism. In Autism's False Prophets: Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, Offit warns against the dangers of not vaccinating children as well as discussing how autism research has been hampered by the misguided focus on vaccines as a cause.
Read an excerpt | Read Paul Offit’s New York Times op-ed, “Inoculated Against the Facts.” | Listen to an inteview with Paul Offit on Science Friday
Below is a video of Paul Offit discussing the book.
Pakistan
In Making Sense of Pakistan Farzana Shaikh argues that though external influences and domestic politics have unquestionably shaped Pakistan, an uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of "being Pakistani" lies at the heart of the state's social and political decline. Shaikh shows how these concerns have contributed to the spread of Islam in the public sphere. They have also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, compromising the country's economic foundations and social stability. This uncertainty has also affected Pakistan's foreign policy, which compensates for the country's poor sense of national identity.
Shaikh also looks at contemporary Pakistan in "The Vacuum that Rules Pakistan," an op-ed from The Independent and was recently interviewed on Tea with The Economist
Frontline Pakistan by Zahid Hussain offers a much-needed perspective on the ever-changing events in Pakistan. Zahid Hussain, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, presents an inside account of Perevez Musharraf's Islamabad. He reveals Musharraf's difficult balancing act of appeasing the radical Islamists in his government with the concerns and wishes of Washington.
In a review of the book, Ahmed Rashid writes, "Frontline Pakistan is the first serious exposure of the rise and continuation of Islamic extremism in Pakistan. Zahid Hussain shows the links between the major jihadi groups of Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and the ISI with a degree of detail not seen in any Western writing on the subject"
Below is a video of Hussain's talk at The Asia Society. You can also view it here.
