What We're Reading

Hello Material Supporters,

Here is what we’re reading this week:

Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes has been reading “A Spy Among Friends” by Tom MacIntyre.

Executive Editor Natalie Orpett caught up on some New Yorker profiles, including “An Accidental Revolutionary” by Dexter Filkens, about Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and “Lina Khan's Battle to Rein in Big Tech” by Sheelah Kolhatkar, about FTC Chair Lina Khan and efforts to bring more muscle to U.S. antitrust enforcement.  She also read several retrospectives on the life and legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died last week.

Publisher and Chief Operating Officer David Priess prepared for the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection by reading Joanne Freeman's exceptional “Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.” Listen to his conversation with Joanne on this week's special Jan. 6 episode of the Chatter podcast, which drops Thursday morning. Now, he's in the midst of “The Moon: A History for the Future,” in which Oliver Morton relates how we have looked at the Moon and used it to reflect our perceptions of Earth, from humanity's earliest days to spacefaring times.

Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic recommends Katie Kitamura's new novel “Intimacies,” which follows an interpreter at the International Criminal Court as she navigates an uncertain relationship and a new assignment interpreting for the former president of a West African country accused of war crimes.

Managing Editor Jacob Schulz is reading Roberto Savino's "Gomorrah," a book that explores the control exerted by organized crime in Southern Italy over the Italian textile market. He's also binging Le Bureau, a superb French show about the DGSE, France's foreign intelligence agency.

Associate Editor Bryce Klehm is reading “Hannah Arendt” by Samantha Rose Hill. Hill does an excellent job placing the evolution of Arendt’s thinking in the context of her life and historical events. He is also reading Susan Glasser’s article in the New Yorker, “Joe Biden’s Year of Hoping Dangerously.”

Associate Editor Rohini Kurup is listening to an episode of “Radiolab” about Oliver Sipple, the man who prevented an assassination attempt against President Ford in 1975. The episode looks at how Sipple’s life was upended after he gained publicity and it considers interesting questions related to privacy and press freedoms.

Digital Media Director Claudia Swain just finished listening to “Ghostland” by Colin Dickey, which examines famous hauntings in the United States and discusses what these stories (and ghost stories in general) say about American conceptions of history, culture, and fear.

Lawfare’s Quote of the Week: “From Merrick Garland Needs to Speak Up” by Quinta Jurecic, Andrew Kent and Benjamin Wittes: “If the goal of the Justice Department under Garland, as it was under Levi, is to rebuild the expectation that the department will act apolitically on investigative and prosecutorial matters, public communications matter. Public communications from the attorney general himself matter a lot. Garland is a scholarly man, a deeply thoughtful person. He is leaving one of his most important tools in the shed: As Levi said in one speech, ‘The basic tool for the lawyer is the word.’”

From the Lawfare Archive:  Dec. 10, 2019, “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Conflicting Views on the Role of Sanctions in America’s Strategy Toward Russia” by William Ford

Thank you!