Nicholas Thompson: All Publications, Events and Press

Red Star Rising

adminn — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:32:00 -0500

He was a poet, a singer and a voracious reader. He memorized works by Gogol and Chekhov and amused himself with Thackeray, Balzac and Plato. At seminary, he'd sneak his worldly texts in and read by candlelight, sometimes hiding the banned books in stacks of firewood. He intensively studied Esperanto when he thought it the likely language of the future. "He didn't just read books," said a friend. "He ate them."

He had a lovely voice and was often hired to sing at weddings. Much of his poetry described the beauties of nature. It was so good that Prince Ilya Chavchavadze,… more

How We Blew It

Articles — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:54:00 -0400

The history of the world came down to this. Ronald Reagan is standing in a room in Iceland with three men: Richard Perle, the young hawk; Paul Nitze, the old sage; George Shultz, the steady counsel. Mikhail Gorbachev is upstairs. "Everything could be decided right now," Gorbachev mutters as he paces.

The four Americans are discussing a massive arms-control deal, and right now it depends on minutiae. The two sides already have agreed to fantastic reductions in the nuclear weapons that long have threatened to devastate the globe. For 20 years, the superpowers have negotiated for inches. But today, feet, yards,… more

A War Best Served Cold

Articles — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:45:00 -0400

Sixty years ago this month, writing under the byline of X, George Kennan supposedly laid out America’s cold war foreign policy. Kennan’s essay is often said to be the most influential article in the history of this country’s foreign policy, but neither Harry Truman, nor any president after him, actually followed X’s recommendations. “Containment,” the word the essay introduced, was applied in a bellicose way that Kennan didn’t intend.

But while Truman dodged X’s advice, George W. Bush should follow it. Kennan was wrong about how we would win the cold war, but right about how to fight the war… more

Words of Wisdom From a 'Realist' in a Time of War

Articles — Tue, 01 May 2007 23:09:00 -0400

The latest book by John Lukacs, a preeminent historian of the mid-20th century, is a pocket biography of George Kennan, the diplomat and framer of much of America’s early Cold War policy. The subject is too obscure to make a bestseller, and Lukacs explicitly states that this is a character study and not a major biography. So, what gives? Perhaps there’s one simple answer: the Iraq war.

If a conflict ever were anathema to Kennan, it would be this one. He died two years ago, at age 101. Had he lived, he would have been firing arrows from every quiver. He… more

Mirror Image

Ron Tang — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

"Do you see, as some of your critics do, a parallel between what's going on in Iraq now and Vietnam?" President George W. Bush was asked at a press conference earlier this month. The president, unsurprisingly, responded "No." "Because there's a duly-elected government; 12 million people voted," he said. "Obviously, there is sectarian violence, but this is, in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels."

It is possible to quibble with the president's explanation. There was religious unrest in Vietnam in 1963, when Buddhists protested the Christian-led government, and South Vietnam held presidential elections in 1967. Yet… more

How We Won

Articles — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I was terrified when the mailman showed up, straining under the weight of Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis's new book. The paper galleys clock in at four pounds and the title is imposingly simple: The Cold War. Likely the country's most esteemed historian of this particular topic, Gaddis has already churned out the following works: Origins of the Cold War, Rethinking Cold War History, and Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. What could be new and fresh in this volume? I expected a long, dry exegesis of how recently opened Soviet archives reveal the unappreciated influence of Anatol… more

The Young and Cash-strapped

Articles — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Toward the end of her new book, Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to Be Young, 25-year-old author Anya Kamenetz, a columnist for the Village Voice, proffers a bit of advice for her peers. Activist students shouldn't focus their efforts on "free speech, the war in Iraq, AIDS, the drug war, and living wages." They should fight to reform America's credit card laws.

Young people often lead battles for social change -- think the civil rights movement here or the recent revolutions in the Ukraine or Serbia -- but to Kamenetz, that kind of idealism is… more

Waging War Over the Constitution and its Framers

Articles — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Conservative judicial scholars love the Founding Fathers, and they have created a legal theory called "originalism" in which the Founders' words essentially are carved in stone. If you're stuck with a complicated legal question, just think about what James Madison would do. "The Constitution means what the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention and of the state ratifying conventions understood it to mean; not what we judges think it should mean," Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said in a 2001 speech.

Why do conservatives love originalism so? Partly it's because tightly tethering the law to one document, and to the men… more

Worthy Opponents

Articles — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In the summer of 1943, George Kennan and Paul Nitze met on a train going from New York to Washington. Neither knew who the other was, nor was there any reason they should have. Kennan was a 39-year-old diplomat, just returned from Portugal. A Wall Street man four years Kennan's junior, Nitze was a second-level official at the Board of Economic Warfare. But Nitze found something compelling about Kennan and sat down across from the distinguished-looking gentleman in the dining car. The pair started talking and began a friendship that would last throughout the Cold War, a war that both… more

A Crime with a Name

Articles — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Guy Horton has seen people doing forced labor in Burma's jungle, smelled the rotting corpses of villagers killed by bayonets, and heard the cries of a small child being tossed by government troops into a burning hut. But it was something seemingly trivial that convinced the 53-year-old British human rights researcher that he was witnessing genocide.

In 2000, Horton was trekking on a fact-finding tour through Karen state, in the Texas-sized country of Burma. He came upon a village of bamboo huts that government troops had torched. While picking through the ashes of the village, he found a metal cooking… more

Common Denominator

Articles — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Malaysia and Indonesia couldn't be called twins, but they might be called siblings. The adjacent Southeast Asian nations possess similar natural resources and their citizens speak similar languages and follow similar strains of Islam. But Malaysia's economy is prospering while Indonesia's is floundering. Malaysia's stock market is far more vibrant than its neighbor's, and its average resident is three times richer.

Economists might explain these divergent paths by pointing to the countries' different responses to the Asian financial crisis of the mid-1990s. Sociologists might find a cultural explanation in the close-knit community of Chinese immigrants who are the most powerful… more

The Sword of Spitzer

Articles — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

A little-known law called the Martin Act gives New York's attorney general extraordinary power, yet for 75 years this Excalibur has been left to rust in its scabbard. Now, Eliot Spitzer is wielding it against the biggest players on Wall Street. Should such a powerful weapon be left in anyone's hands?

For three-quarters of a century, an unspoken gentleman's agreement bound the moneymen of Wall Street and the New York attorney general's office. The AG got to use an astonishingly powerful state securities law called the Martin Act, but not against the big boys. Acceptable targets through the years included… more

Wiring Africa

Articles — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Patriensa, Ghana -- Down a steep hill, on the edge of the deep green forest that encircles this village in Central Ghana, a man with a strange growth on his upper arm lies on a wooden bench in great pain. Mary Agykpomaa, a local healer, has just cut a hole in his shoulder and another one in his chest. Now she's squirting a strange potion into one hole and watching it ooze out of the other. She boils leaves, burns snakes, adds mud, and then stews it all up into a potion that she uses to treat AIDS, bad vision,… more

To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?

Articles — Sun, 12 Oct 2003 06:00:00 -0400

In the fall of 2000, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis had not yet earned any powerful enemies, at least so far as they were aware. They were just two obscure Swedish entrepreneurs who had worked with three Estonian programmers to write a file-sharing application called Kazaa. At the time, the free program was merely one of Napster's several weak stepsisters, lumped together in news reports with the likes of Snarfzilla and ToadNode.

But a few months later, the record industry and its lawyers swatted down Napster. And Kazaa, with its easy-to-use interface and reliable technology, quickly began scooping up users.… more

Not Just a Predator

Articles — Tue, 30 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

LAMAR VALLEY, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK -- It's a morning of freezing rain in the valley and a pack of wolves is roaming around Black Tail Creek. A few pups gnaw on an old elk carcass while some adults scout the nearby valleys for prey. Not far away, a few elk have sensed the impending danger and are dashing about. To the tourists in the park, the prospect of a wolf attacking an elk is riveting. To the biologists staring into their binoculars, the real action is taking place in Black Tail Creek itself.

There, a cluster of willow plants is flourishing… more

Netflix Uses Speed to Fend Off Wal-Mart Challenge

Articles — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Reed Hastings, Netflix's 42-year-old co-founder and chief executive, has made a lot of money from starting his business. But he is not planning to retire to enjoy his riches anytime soon.

The company, one of the few surviving successes of the dot-com era, has been profitable in renting DVD's by mail through an innovative online service. But Netflix now faces a bruising challenge from Wal-Mart Stores, the $244 billion-a-year retailing monolith that has recently started a competing rental business with nearly identical offerings.

Wal-Mart has enough money "to send a man to the moon," Mr. Hastings said. "We alternate between stark… more

The Exterminator

Articles — Wed, 03 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

In May 2002, Westar Energy sent a $25,000 check to Texans for a Republican Majority, an organization set up to propel Republicans into the Texas state government. What did the Kansas-based Westar care about Texas Republicans? Probably not much. But it did want to curry favor with the political group's founder, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the House majority leader.

DeLay's "agreement is necessary," one Westar executive helpfully explained in a memo, according to documents released by the company's board, "before the House conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill."

DeLay took Westar's money, invited… more

Notes From the Underground

Articles — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Every two weeks or so, I pack up my Taylor acoustic guitar, fill my backpack with CDs of my music, and head down into the New York City subways to busk away. I make good money, and I get to watch and study people, too. For example, I can now tell from about 50 feet away whether a woman is likely to give me money.

If she's walking fast, wearing headphones, angrily porting a briefcase, or chasing down one of her children, that's an easy no. She wouldn't throw a dime into Jimi Hendrix's case. Other women, who are… more

Africa's Expat Politics

Articles — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

In most African elections, Big Men use coercion and bribes to stay in office. But since 2000, three major African nations have held real democratic presidential referendums. Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade ousted Abdou Diouf in March 2000. John Kufuor defeated Jerry Rawlings' party in Ghana nine months later. And in December 2002, Kenya's Mwai Kibaki triumphed over Daniel Arap Moi's handpicked successor. All three of these opposition leaders are elderly statesmen. Wade was 74 when he was elected, Kufuor was 63, and Kibaki 71. One partial explanation for why old, familiar faces still win African elections comes in the pairing of… more

The Dean Machine Rolls Through the Big Apple

Articles — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Howard Dean's bash in Bryant Park last night makes an easy target. The New York City park was packed, but seemingly everyone there was white, under 30 and dressed for a Burlington, Vt., block party. A man selling tie-dyed shirts did brisk business, and the crowd of about 10,000 seemed oddly disconnected from the incredible mix of people and cultures walking New York's streets right nearby, many of whom must have wondered what was going on. Save for the ubiquitous blue signs, "Howard Dean for America," it would have been hard to know that Bryant Park was hosting a presidential… more