Best of the Moment
national-politics
FiveBooks Interviews
Alon Hilu’s last book was labelled anti-Zionist but was praised by Shimon Peres and won Israel’s top literary prize, which was later revoked. These five books inspired him.
Did the United States overreact to the threat of Communism in the 1950s? Harvey Klehr says there was a genuine threat to national security and, yes, Julius Rosenberg was guilty. He picks five books on Soviet espionage and the American Communist movement.
Trevor Phillips believes that some inequalities thought of as racial in origin actually have more to do with economics. He chooses FiveBooks on equality.
Meritocracy, says Professor Alison Wolf, is not necessarily a positive thing, and education might be good for the individual but it won't cure society's ills. She chooses FiveBooks on education and social mobility.
Steven Katz is director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University. He was chair of the academic committee of the United States Holocaust Museum for five years, and remains on the committee. He talks about the historiography of the Holocaust, and recommends FiveBooks that give a deeper understanding of it
Marko Rakar ran the successful election campaign for the Croatian president Ivo Josipovic and says that peaking at exactly the right moment – ie on election day – is key. Other crucial factors revealed in his FiveBooks.
Adam Foulds says nowadays people have a competitive attitude to the British Empire's moral degradation: ‘We may have behaved badly but the Africans behaved much worse.’ He chooses FiveBooks on the Mau Mau and Empire.
Parts of Mexico are descending into narco-states as the drug wars rage on,
but Hugh Thomson thinks the country is far more complicated than most
writers acknowledge. He chooses FiveBooks on Mexico.
The Chilcot inquiry heard Tony Blair’s version of events leading up to the Iraq war this week. Here May Witwit, an Iraqi university lecturer who left the country when life got too dangerous, chooses FiveBooks that describe what was really going on.
Top Pentagon leaders are now supporting plans to repeal the
controversial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law on gays in the military.
Former soldier Dan Choi tells FiveBooks about the very personal
campaign he has fought against bigotry.