tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6 2013-05-06T04:26:51Z Movable Type 3.33 tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44521 2013-05-02T20:30:14Z 2013-05-06T04:26:51Z

Why poor nations aren’t prisoners of their history.

Charles Kenny www.washingtonmonthly.com Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth by Peter Blair Henry Basic Books, 240 pp. In his new book Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth, Peter Blair Henry, dean of the Stern School of Business at New York University, wants to persuade you of three big ideas about economic success in countries rich and poor. First, economies aren’t destined to wealth or poverty by constitutions or by bureaucratic structures; leaders have a choice to follow policies that... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44520 2013-05-02T20:29:31Z 2013-05-06T04:26:16Z

The perils and promise of online learning.

Richard D. Kahlenberg Higher Education in the Digital Age by William G. Bowen Princeton University Press, 200 pp. William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, is a giant in the field of higher education, having written ground-breaking books in recent decades on affirmative action at selective colleges, class inequality in higher education, the factors that improve college completion, and the role of sports at universities. He has now turned his sights on two of the most important issues facing colleges: the... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44519 2013-05-02T20:27:25Z 2013-05-06T19:00:38Z

Online learning will transform the nature of college for everybody—except the affluent.

Daniel Luzer College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students by Jeffrey J. Selingo New Harvest, 256 pp. American universities are the envy of the world, but a few hundred very prestigious schools hide the fact that most colleges perform no ground-breaking research, offer mostly large and impersonal lecture classes, and provide students with few extras. Almost half of students—42 percent—who start a bachelor’s degree drop out of college. Student loan debt is crippling, surpassing $1 trillion... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44518 2013-05-02T20:25:33Z 2013-05-08T18:18:39Z

Chronicling America’s not-quite-decline.

Michael O'Donnell ... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44517 2013-05-02T20:24:05Z 2013-05-10T18:20:24Z

What Deng Xiaoping, Pope John Paul, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Margaret Thatcher had in common.

Jacob Heilbrunn Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl Basic Books, 432 pp. Most books about a single year are iffy enterprises. More often than not, they are held together by a tenuous thread or overstate the case for the significance of the year they focus on. This is emphatically not the case with journalist Christian Caryl’s new book, Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century. Caryl, who is currently a contributing editor... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44516 2013-05-02T20:21:30Z 2013-05-06T04:14:12Z

Forget Kenya. The president’s secret political philosophy is apparently rooted in seventeenth-century Rotterdam.

Mark Schmitt www.washingtonmonthly.com Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition by Ruth O’Brien University of Chicago Press, 432 pp. Few presidents since the founding generation and Lincoln have been treated as significant political thinkers in their own right. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan are all considered to have been representatives of powerful ideologies at their moments of ascent, but we know they were not the authors of those ideas. Bill Clinton may have been the smartest... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44515 2013-05-02T20:20:23Z 2013-05-06T16:17:01Z

Did my wife’s cosmetics give her breast cancer?

John F. Wasik www.washingtonmonthly.com (Studio 504) When Kathleen felt a lump in her right breast she began a journey that millions have experienced—or, sadly, will experience. After a painful biopsy and other tests confirmed it was cancer, my wife was thrown into a cauldron of tears, doubt, and fear for herself and her loved ones. Our two daughters were then just eight and twelve. Like many cancer patients, Kathleen also experienced a stranglehold of guilt. Was it something she did or didn’t do that... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44514 2013-05-02T20:17:12Z 2013-05-05T18:00:09Z

If it can be said that there is a father of data-based government, it is a famous and controversial one: Robert McNamara. As a young captain during World War II,...

Haley Sweetland Edwards If it can be said that there is a father of data-based government, it is a famous and controversial one: Robert McNamara. As a young captain during World War II, McNamara was assigned to the Army Air Corps Office of Statistical Control, where he applied the ideas about efficiency and cost-effectiveness that he’d learned at Harvard Business School to questions of defense: What should the schedules be for the B-29 bombers? When is it most efficient for them to carry... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44513 2013-05-02T20:15:51Z 2013-05-06T03:15:59Z

Haley Sweetland Edwards Encore?: O’Malley’s data-driven style of management has earned him accolades as both a mayor and a governor, leaving pundits to wonder where he’s going next. (Jay Baker/Office of Governor Martin O’Malley) The governor is hungry. Brown paper bag in hand, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley strides into a conference room on the fourth floor of an old government building in downtown Annapolis. “I brought lunch,” he whispers to no one in particular and, stooping slightly in the way that people do... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44512 2013-05-02T20:13:16Z 2013-05-07T18:12:50Z

Why are U.S. Border Patrol agents shooting into Mexico and killing innocent civilians?

John Carlos Frey www.washingtonmonthly.com On the southern bank: Ernestina Santillan stands on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, where her son, Juan Pablo, was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents last July. (John Carlos Frey) Until moments before U.S. Border Patrol agents shot him dead on the night of October 10, 2012, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez had passed a pleasant evening in his hometown of Nogales, Mexico. He had visited his girlfriend, Luz, and watched television with her family; at around... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44510 2013-05-02T20:05:01Z 2013-05-06T15:30:44Z

Meet the handful of conservative writers who are suggesting, respectfully, that the GOP change its policies.

Ryan Cooper http://www.ryanlouiscooper.com There are two striking facts about the apparent glasnost that has broken out among Republicans since their shocking (to them) November election losses. The first is how timid the rethinking has been so far. There is much talk, in the Republican National Committee’s recent “autopsy” report and elsewhere, of the need to change the party’s “messaging,” but little about the need to change the policies behind the messaging. The second striking fact is how long it’s taken just to get... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44509 2013-05-02T20:02:33Z 2013-05-05T20:24:54Z

A new route to universal national service and economic fairness.

Adam Garfinkle www.washingtonmonthly.com It is time to enact a baby bond/national service program in America. There is a crisis of civic participation in America, one that marches in step with the erosion in social trust over the past several decades. Notwithstanding the Tea Party (which is more a governmental phenomenon than a grassroots social one) and Occupy Wall Street movements, we’ve become increasingly a nation of cynical spectators, not participants, in our own governance. No democracy can be healthy with the levels of... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44508 2013-05-02T20:00:43Z 2013-05-06T02:20:11Z

A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks....

Washington Monthly www.WashingtonMonthly.com A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks.... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44532 2013-05-02T19:58:32Z 2013-05-06T02:10:28Z

Some post-autopsy thoughts from Reince Priebus.

Jeff Nussbaum and Ryan Jacobs www.washingtonmonthly.com April 18, 2013 To: Interested Parties From: Reince Priebus Subject: Update on Our Efforts to Pitch a Bigger Tent Friends, I continue to hear complaints that the only growth our members are seeing is in the prostate, but our policies aren’t the problem. We just need to reach out to new voters with new technology and new messaging. Here’s how. New Voters A recent study of 2,300 college undergraduates concluded that 45 percent of them “demonstrated no significant gains... tag:www.washingtonmonthly.com,2013:/magazine//6.44507 2013-05-02T19:57:21Z 2013-05-06T15:32:42Z

Why we’re suckers for remakes of The Great Gatsby.

Louis Barbash www.washingtonmonthly.com Party like it’s 1925: Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio star in the most recent version of The Great Gatsby, out in theaters in May. (Warner Brothers) The story begins with a party at a Long Island estate, “a colossal affair by any standard … with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.” In its blue gardens men and girls...