Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Thanks for joining me this week.

New Goodreads Review

Recommendations

China Stories

Christopher Beam, “How I Accidentally Inspired a Major Chinese Motion Picture”

Rachel Cheung, “The Hunt for an Heir”

Over the past decade, applicants across the continent have traded prestigious academic institutions in countries like Britain and the United States for Chinese alternatives, attracted by government scholarships, affordable tuition, lower living costs and easier access to visas.

— Abdi Latif Dahir, “China’s Quiet Win: Outmaneuvering U.S. for Africa’s Future Leaders”

Tripti Lahiri, Krishna Pokharel, and Austin Ramzy, with photos by Sumit Dayal, “Seeking the Dalai Lama’s Blessing, a Tibetan Monk Sets Out to Flee China” and “How Images of the Dalai Lama’s Hands, Feet Landed a Tibetan Woman in China’s Dragnet”

Michael Luo, “The Victims of the Trump Administration’s China-Bashing”

Alexandra Stevenson, “Chinese Labor Rights Group Led by Former Tiananmen Protest Leader Closes”

Chun Han Wong, “Harvard Has Trained So Many Chinese Communist Officials, They Call It Their ‘Party School’”

Guobin Yang, “Two Maoisms”

Wanderings Around the World

Suzanne Cope, “The Secret Newspapers That Helped Defeat Fascism”

There is more at stake, however, than whether tourists have seamless visits. As 18 former top Park Service officials pointed out to Mr. Burgum in a recent letter, the 1916 law that created the agency prioritizes the protection of the parks’ natural resources over the services it offers to visitors. Those former officials expressed concern that park managers are essentially being forced “to ignore their park resource protection responsibilities in favor of providing for visitor services.”

— Ted Kerasote, “Is This the Beginning of the End of America’s National Parks?”

Sanam Maher, “How Pakistan fell in love with sushi”

For foreign-born journalists who have found refuge not just in the U.S. but at Voice of America, losing their jobs feels like an existential threat — one that could stop them from working every day to speak truth to power, for the first time in their careers.

— Scott Nover, “The U.S. granted these journalists asylum. Then it fired them.”

Richard Sutcliffe, “Visiting the football stadium left in ruins after the Chernobyl disaster”

Shaun Walker, “‘I am not who you think I am’: how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own son”

Standout Stories

The El Mordjene affair went much deeper than a wacky food fight or an abstruse trade dispute. It wasn’t really about hazelnut spreads. It was about nostalgia, memory, injustice, nationalism, globalization, decolonization, protectionism, racism, identity, immigration, invasion—the same things that all arguments are about nowadays, transposed to the realm of spreadable snacks. The corollary to the question “What kind of world would it be without Nutella?” is “What kind of world would it be with El Mordjene?”

— Lauren Collins, “How a Hazelnut Spread Became a Sticking Point in Franco-Algerian Relations”

Hu’s honest self-analysis had turned him into an everyman for modern China. Readers from all walks of life found parallels with the relentless grind of their own working lives. They were moved by his assessment that the pursuit of freedom, away from work, was a matter of consciousness. “In a sense, there is no essential difference between white-collar workers or blue-collar workers, working in a cubicle or on a construction site . . . I hope everyone can be freer,” wrote a user called Lottie.

— Edward White, “The ‘wild’ writer who told the truth about work in China”

Featured photo: Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland, October 18, 2024.