What We Are Reading Today: Debating War and Peace by Jonathan Mermin

Updated 15 October 2018
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Debating War and Peace by Jonathan Mermin

  • Mermin shows that if there is no debate over US policy in Washington, there is no debate in the news
  • The author constructs a new framework for thinking about press-government relations

The First Amendment ideal of an independent press allows American journalists to present critical perspectives on government policies and actions; but are the media independent of government in practice? Here Jonathan Mermin demonstrates that when it comes to military intervention, journalists over the past two decades have let the government itself set the terms and boundaries of foreign policy debate in the news.

Analyzing newspaper and television reporting of US intervention in Grenada and Panama, the bombing of Libya, the Gulf War, and US actions in Somalia and Haiti, he shows that if there is no debate over US policy in Washington, there is no debate in the news. 

Journalists often criticize the execution of US policy, but fail to offer critical analysis of the policy itself if actors inside the government have not challenged it. Mermin ultimately offers concrete evidence of outside-Washington perspectives that could have been reported in specific cases, and explains how the press could increase its independence of Washington in reporting foreign policy news. 

The author constructs a new framework for thinking about press-government relations, based on the observation that bipartisan support for US intervention is often best interpreted as a political phenomenon, not as evidence of the wisdom of US policy. Journalists should remember that domestic political factors often influence foreign policy debate. The media, Mermin argues, should not see a Washington consensus as justification for downplaying critical perspectives.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Standard Model’

Updated 2 min 29 sec ago
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Standard Model’

Authors: Yuval Grossman and Yossi Nir

“The Standard Model” is an elegant and extremely successful theory that formulates the laws of fundamental interactions among elementary particles.

This incisive textbook introduces students to the physics of the Standard Model while providing an essential overview of modern particle physics, with a unique emphasis on symmetry principles as the starting point for constructing models.

“The Standard Model” equips students with an in-depth understanding of this impressively predictive theory.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dynamics and Astrophysics of Galaxies’

Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dynamics and Astrophysics of Galaxies’

Author: Jo Bovy

This book provides an in-depth introduction to the dynamics, formation, and evolution of galaxies.

Starting with the basics of galactic structure and galactic dynamics, it helps students develop a sophisticated understanding of the orbital structure of spirals, ellipticals, and other types of galaxies.

The book demonstrates how observations led to the discovery that galaxies are dominated by dark matter and explores in detail how structure evolves from the primordial universe to form the halos that host galaxies.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’

Photo/Supplied
Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’

  • Haley structures Malcolm’s blistering critiques — including his rejection of nonviolent protest and disillusionment with white liberalism — with journalistic precision

Author: Alex Haley

Malcolm X’s posthumously published 1965 autobiography, crafted with Alex Haley, remains an indispensable document of the 20th-century US.

Its visceral narrative traces an extraordinary metamorphosis — from street hustler to revolutionary thinker — and offers enduring lessons about systemic injustice and the power of self-reinvention.

The opening chapters detail the African American civil rights activist’s fractured youth: His father’s violent death (officially a car accident, though family attributed it to white supremacists), his mother’s mental collapse and his pivot to crime as “Detroit Red.”

What struck me most was how imprisonment became his unlikely crucible.

Through voracious self-education and conversion to the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X transformed into one of America’s most incisive racial commentators.

Haley structures Malcolm’s blistering critiques — including his rejection of nonviolent protest and disillusionment with white liberalism — with journalistic precision.

Malcolm X’s 1964 pilgrimage to Makkah proves the memoir’s most consequential pivot. Witnessing racial unity in the holy city fundamentally reoriented his worldview. He began advocating cross-racial coalition-building against oppression, a philosophical evolution abruptly halted by his February 1965 assassination.

Haley’s contribution deserves note: His disciplined prose tempers Malcolm’s polemical intensity, lending the narrative reflective depth without diluting its urgency.

While academics occasionally quibble over timeline specifics (notably Malcolm X’s early NOI chronology), the memoir’s moral core stands unchallenged.

What lingers for me is Malcolm X’s intellectual ferocity — how his advocacy for education as liberation weaponized knowledge against subjugation.

Malcolm X’s demand for Black self-determination continues to challenge America’s unresolved racial contradictions with unnerving relevance. Half a century later, the book remains essential reading not for easy answers, but for its uncompromising questions.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Puzzle of Ethiopian Politics’

Updated 23 June 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Puzzle of Ethiopian Politics’

Author: Terrence Lyons

The book offers insight into a political group, with its origins in a small insurgency in northern Ethiopia, which transformed itself into a party (the EPRDF) with a hierarchy that links even the smallest village in the country to the center.

“The Puzzle of Ethiopian Politics” offers a study of legacies of protracted civil war and rebel victory over the government, which continue to shape Ethiopian politics.

Terrence Lyons argues that the very structures that enabled the ruling party to overcome the challenges of a war-to-peace transition are the source of the challenges that it faces now.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Extinction of Experience'

Photo/Supplied
Updated 23 June 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Extinction of Experience'

  • One of the strong points of the book is the author’s writing style and how she narrows down and simplifies the issue of technology dependency for readers

“The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World” by Christine Rosen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discusses how humans are relying heavily on technology and digital interactions in modern times.

Rosen argues in her 2024 book that this reliance has made people dependent on them for almost everything.

Digital experiences, according to the author, are replacing real-world experiences and, with time, this will push people even further from genuine contact and physical presence.

According to Rosen, this could potentially reduce people’s understanding of empathy and connection, or even memory.

She stresses the importance of utilizing technology wisely and calls for a critical and mindful approach to it. She also emphasizes the need to bring back genuine experiences through physical interaction so they can be treasured.

One of the strong points of the book is the author’s writing style and how she narrows down and simplifies the issue of technology dependency for readers.

On the other hand, its weaknesses — that have been highlighted by readers — are that some of its chapters lack a realistic view of the world we live in, and keep repeating issues and complaining about current problems without providing solutions.

Rosen is also the author of “My Fundamentalist Education” and “Preaching Eugenics.”