In upstate NY

speaking of cats....

Besides being occasionally interrupted to fight off the hordes of deer eating our garden (not to mention the local cat who appears to have fallen madly in love with our cat Rocco and be pursuing him relentlessly), and pausing to watch the new X-Men First Class movie with my Mom (I'm not embarrassed to say - totally awesome.  I have mutant power envy.), I have been catching up on a lot of reading on our porch.

Some recommendations from the last two days:

• Good recent series on Brazil in The American Interest.  A lot of different perspectives.
• Keith Richards autobiography Life (endlessly entertaining and surprisingly well written... he's completely fascinating)
• I think this should be required reading for everyone in the IR/ID field, it rang very, very familiar and accurate- http://shotgunshackblog.com/2011/06/03/pretty-on-paper/  
• Barbara Kingsolver's La Lacuna  (ok so maybe she's cheating a bit by making her protagonist friends with historical figures like Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo ... there's certainly a lot of name dropping that goes on and his life is exaggeratedly touched by every important historical event of the period - e.g. his Mom dies in a car crash because she's rushing to see Howard Hughes land his plane - but the book is a lot of fun precisely because of all this historical "context," gorgeously written, and it's a thought-provoking meditation on art, friendship, and concepts of national patrimony...  among other things).

Articles that irritated me recently (try to guess why):

• Bloomberg Businessweek - God's MBAs: Why Mormon Missions Produce Leader

Before I turn back to my pile of reading, a special shout out to my Dad as Father's Day approaches...