What I’m Reading: Eclectic Edition

Some weeks, as I attempt to chase down a selected concept or perceive a selected occasion, my studying lists have clear themes: what to learn to know X; three books on Y.

That is … not a kind of weeks. As an alternative, I’ve been feeling mental entropy, pinging from one subject to a different. I’ve determined to lean into it, letting my mind vary freely and trusting that it’ll take me someplace attention-grabbing.

I’m happy with the outcomes: a captivating new e-book on China, a brand new political science paper that explains a quirk of far-right politics and a puzzle-box thriller novel set a couple of miles from my home. Right here’s my eclectic studying checklist:

• “Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World,” by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, turned out to be significantly topical this week after reports {that a} researcher deep inside Britain’s Parliament had been arrested in March on suspicion of working for the Chinese language authorities. Allen-Ebrahimian, the China reporter for Axios, neatly combines evaluation of China’s efforts to infiltrate western establishments through “authoritarian financial statecraft” with a have a look at why the West is weak to such affect campaigns. And though the e-book is from a nonfiction style by which prose styling tends to take a again seat to argument, “Beijing Guidelines” accommodates some beautiful writing, making it a pleasure to learn.

• “The enemy of my enemy is my pal” has lengthy been a widely known saying, however now, due to this attention-grabbing new paper within the American Political Science Evaluate, it’s additionally political science. The authors examine whether or not hostility to immigrants, significantly Muslims, has truly helped to generate assist for L.G.B.T.+ rights amongst in any other case conservative nativist voters.

  They discovered that residents “strategically liberalize” their stance on L.G.B.T.+ rights when they’re advised that folks from an ethnic out-group — for instance, Muslim immigrants in Europe — oppose such protections. In a very high-profile instance, after a Muslim man dedicated a mass shooting at a homosexual nightclub in 2016, Donald Trump gave a speech calling the assault a “strike on the coronary heart and soul of who we’re as a nation” and “an assault on the power of free folks to stay their lives, love who they need and categorical their id.”

  That in all probability means public assist for homosexual rights is weaker than it seems, the researchers conclude, as a result of among the obvious assist for inclusion is definitely a want to exclude others. (Right here once more, Trump is a helpful exemplar: Though he embraced homosexual rights within the Pulse speech as a cudgel in opposition to Muslims, in apply his administration dismantled L.G.BT. protections, together with rolling again guidelines in opposition to office discrimination and banning transgender folks from the army.)

• “The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels,” a brand new thriller by Janice Hallett, was my lighter studying. Hallett buildings her novels as dossiers of discovered paperwork, transcripts and different proof, leaving the reader to attempt to discover the actual story amongst unreliable narrators’ statements. That course of appeals to the journalist in me, which could clarify why I examine 80 p.c of this in a single sitting. It clearly additionally appeals to numerous different folks — Hallett’s books are greatest sellers in Britain.

  However as along with her final e-book, “The Twyford Code,” there’s a rigidity between the frilly twists and turns wanted to maintain the puzzle attention-grabbing, the realism of her characters and the plausibility of the plot decision, which left me a little bit chilly.

What are you studying?

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