EXCERPT

Fault Lines

Global Thinker No. 26 Raghuram Rajan's look at the fissures that brought about the global financial crisis -- and which are still at work today.

BY RAGHURAM RAJAN | DECEMBER 2010

Looking Back on Too Big to Fail

From the new afterword to Andrew Ross Sorkin's classic tale of the financial crisis, recommended by several FP Global Thinkers: Have we learned anything from our failures?

BY ANDREW ROSS SORKIN | DECEMBER 2010

The Rational Optimist Goes Global

Recommended by our global thinkers, an excerpt from Matt Ridley's book on why everything is going to be OK -- even Africa and global warming.

BY MATT RIDLEY | DECEMBER 2010

Keystone Al-Kaeda

In the battle against Al Qaeda, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

BY SCOTT ATRAN | NOVEMBER 5, 2010

Novel Ideas

Statesmen once looked to great works of literature to help them understand the world. No longer.

BY CHARLES HILL | AUGUST 13, 2010

The Fatwa

Ayatollah Khomeini and the legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair. 

BY KENAN MALIK | JULY 15, 2010

Big Brotherhood Is Watching

America's clumsy, misguided attempts to reach out to European Muslims.

BY IAN JOHNSON | MAY 26, 2010

Why Did the Pope Keep Quiet About Hitler?

Newly opened archives reveal what Pius XII knew and when he knew it.

BY HUBERT WOLF | MAY 6, 2010

Pen Portraits from a Forgotten Middle East

From a Zelig-like chronicler, encounters with the people who made history.

BY KAI BIRD | APRIL 27, 2010

The Elite Med Squad That Saved You from Anthrax

A look inside the hunt for a white, powdery killer.

BY MARK PENDERGRAST | APRIL 19, 2010

The Dirty Underside of Lula's Clean Energy Revolution

Brazil's biofueled paradise is looking more and more like a carbon-spewing wasteland.

BY NIKOLAS KOZLOFF | APRIL 9, 2010

Reading Saddam's Fortune

A long-time Middle East correspondent recalls his bizarre experience of the Iraq invasion in the house of a Yezidi prince -- and meeting a fortune-teller who only revealed to him that his future was not in journalism.

BY HUGH POPE | APRIL 5, 2010

Ghosts of Beirut

How the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri transformed the Middle East.

BY MICHAEL YOUNG | MARCH 29, 2010

Peddling Peril

An exclusive excerpt from David Albright's new book, Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies.

BY DAVID ALBRIGHT | MARCH 17, 2010

Dancing for Their Lives

Making an undercover visit to an Iraqi expat nightclub in Syria, where the refugee crisis's illicit economy is on full display.

BY DEBORAH AMOS | MARCH 9, 2010