What a week. I try to think of everything that’s happened around the world in the past seven days and it feels like a grim verse from “We Didn’t Start the Fire (2024 Version).” I can barely keep up with the news, let alone read in-depth stories about it.
And, in some ways, I just didn’t want to. I saw headlines and Bluesky posts; I got the gist. But my days and my brain both felt too full to take on more than the basic details of … (gestures broadly at everything going on around us). I don’t want to bury my head in the sand or ignore current events, but I also don’t really want to be immersed in them at the moment. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way right now.
So, maybe you’ll click every link in the recommendations below. Maybe you’ll read one or two stories. Or maybe you’ll just skim the titles and decide that’s enough.
Whatever your approach—thanks for joining me this week.
Recent Book Reviews
Recommendations
China Stories
Yangyang Cheng, “Soda Science: A Conversation with Susan Greenhalgh” — interview about Greenhalgh’s new book, Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola
In a recent nationwide survey conducted by Stanford University, respondents for the first time in 20 years attributed wealth or poverty to structural factors — such as an unfair economic system and unequal opportunities — rather than individual merits, such as lack of ability and effort. Across all income groups, far more reported that their family’s economic situation had deteriorated over the past five years, and those in the low-income bracket [. . .] reported being the least optimistic about the prospects for social mobility.
— Rachel Cheung, “Broken Promises: What happened to China’s ‘common prosperity’?”
Christine Chung, “Tourism Has Rebounded Worldwide. But Not in Hong Kong.”
Catherine Kim, “What Really Happened On Tim Walz’s Trips to China”
Vivian Wang, “So, Are You Pregnant Yet? China’s In-Your-Face Push for More Babies.”
Wanderings Around the World
For Bohdalov, a former schoolteacher, creating a record of the war is important for future generations, but also for people in the present: foreign delegations who come to the city and Ukrainians from parts of the country that have not been as affected by the war. But the omnipresent memorialization feels, too, like a reminder to people in Kyiv. Bohdalov said he had himself become inured to the constant air-raid alerts. “It’s hard to explain to people from other places,” he said, but war had simply become part of everyday life.
— Keith Gessen, “Ukraine’s Waiting Game”
Mark Lazerus, “Inside Utah Hockey Club’s unprecedented five-month scramble to NHL opening night”
In 2019, motivated by the racial disparity she saw among British hikers, Ms. Fatinikun founded Black Girls Hike. Her goal was to help open up the outdoors to people who have often seemed invisible in Britain’s countryside, and to shatter the perception that outdoor pursuits in the country’s natural spaces are for the white middle and upper class.
— Megan Specia, “She Didn’t See Other Black Hikers. She Decided to Change That.”
Standout Story
This year marks Ann Arbor’s bicentennial, and as part of the anniversary celebrations the Ann Arbor District Library has put out a number of new productions. One of the highlights is There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School, a documentary about the 1965 closing of the majority-Black Jones School and how that decision affected the close-knit neighborhood around it. As several interviewees in the film point out, white Ann Arborites have long congratulated themselves for living in a liberal, progressive city. Pre-closure conditions at Jones School, the decision to shutter it, and the racism and alienation many Black students encountered when they enrolled elsewhere in the city illuminates the hollowness of that belief in Ann Arbor as a liberal exemplar. The 40-minute film is available to stream for free on the library’s website.
Featured photo: A field of pumpkins at Wiard’s Orchards, Ypsilanti, Michigan, October 12, 2024.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 
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