Books and glasses

Best of the week - 7 May 2021

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Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for IR-related content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world.

Getting 'reading ready' for COP26

Global politics, issues and ideas

  • Globalisation's coming golden age. Why crisis ends in connection. Harold James for Foreign Affairs
  • The case for microlateralism. With US support, small states can ably lead global efforts. Jared Cohen and Richard Fontaine in Foreign Affairs
  • Then and now. Aid’s slow pace of change. The evolution of humanitarianism, one issue at a time. Jessica Alexander in The New Humanitarian
  • The endless frontier. American state investment in science is returning. But the threats of today – pandemics, climate change, China – will require bold political leadership as well as money. Sharon Weinberger for Engelsberg Ideas
  • Podcast: Blind Spots. Adam Shatz on his studies of Black diasporic culture, from Juan de Pareja to Audre Lorde, and his critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s case for reparations. From LRB podcasts
  • Podcast: Geopolitics of a pandemic. The Covid-19 crisis has accentuated all the geopolitical fault lines of the past decade. Helen Thompson for Engelsberg Ideas podcasts
  • Podcast: Michael Lewis on the Pandemic: Listen to the story of the people who saw the pandemic coming and why they couldn't get a hearing. From TALKING POLITICS.

United States Foreign Policy

UK, Europe and Russia

Around the globe – Asia, Middle East and Africa

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash