Some Final Power Reads Before Summer Ends!
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Some Final Power Reads Before Summer Ends!
Power Corridor is back from summer break – just in time to share some of our favorite summer reads with you.
Dear Reader,
Power Corridor is back from summer break – although, technically speaking, summer doesn’t end for another 12 days.
That means there’s still time to get your summer on. For those of you who have yet to hit the beach, I have a couple of beach reads for you. And for those who aren’t into “beach reads,” I have some more serious fare.
In case you missed it, I also want to make sure you all had a chance to check out the exclusive story we published on the Trump border wall in our last issue of Power Corridor here. This story was picked up by the press around the world and throughout the month of August, with follow-up pieces from, among others, Politico, NBC News, New York Post and Newsweek, my alma mater.
On hearing the news of border wall material being quietly sold off by the Biden administration for pennies on the dollar, Republican Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi declared it “outrageous.” At the same time, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found in a recent report that the 450 miles of partially built border wall flouted environmental and historic preservation laws, while razing Native American cultural sites.
We’ll be jumping back into these and other matters, from Wall Street to Washington, this autumn, so look out for your twice-weekly issue of Power Corridor in your inbox Wednesdays and Fridays, returning this week.
In the meantime, a special issue of Power Reads, highlighting some of the best articles and books I had the pleasure to peruse this summer.
Power reads
A cheat sheet for your end-of-summer edification.
Have you ever heard of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Art Crime Team? I hadn’t either. But give me fine art, a lauded museum and a splashy crime bust and I am absolutely going to read that story. In a spellbinding piece out this month in Vanity Fair, Nate Freeman unwinds a very, very winding tale about how FBI agents worked for almost a decade to uncover the provenance of some mysterious paintings purportedly created by Jean-Michael Basquiat. Fascinatingly, what happens after the bust turns out to be much more mysterious than even the paintings themselves.
In a summer rife with praises for Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer,” which chronicled the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb,” a quieter story recently caught my eye in Orion magazine. In “The Atomic Disease,” Rachel Greenley examines how America became fixated on all things nuclear – from nuclear bombs to nuclear power – and asks whether nuclear power harnessed for energy instead of as a weapon can be good? She also discloses a key detail: Her own husband seems to have been affected by what she calls “the nuclear disease.” But how much can radiation really mutate cell DNA, leading to cancer? Part science inquiry, part political history, part health memoir, this story is one that is hard to forget.
There’s not much time left to read a big book this summer – but if you’re feeling ambitious, check out Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945, by British historian Richard Overy. (Yes, this was my beach read in August). But bear with me: At a time in the world’s history where facts and truth are regularly and glaringly recast and obfuscated, this book is one of the best reminders yet of how even a very powerful nation can delude itself – and what happens when it cannot change direction in time. An important compendium of the most insightful interrogations with Hitler’s inner circle in the lead-up to the Nuremberg trials. Essential reading for those closely watching the news events of today.
Thanks all, have a terrific start to your week — and see you again this Wednesday!