Greetings…from the future

Writing from the Sydney Airport food court (though what with the Subway and the McDonald’s, you can only tell you’re in Australia by the sign advertising “Coffee and Brekkie”) early Monday morning, Sunday back home.

The best thing about long flights is that it gives you a chance to get a whack of reading done. My in-flight reading list:

Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. I started this before the U.S. election and it may be a moot point in the U.S., but anyone wanting to understand the motivations behind Stephen Harper’s seemingly suicidal inability to stop trying to destroy the Liberals – as opposed to simply trying to implement conservative policies and, you know, govern – could do much worse than this book.

Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. Newly updated (as of October) and very accessible book by this year’s Nobel Economics prize winner. Another piece of essential reading, this time for anyone who’s wondering exactly how we’ve ended up in the most serious global economic crisis since the 1930s.

Charlie Savage’s Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and deservedly so. Savage, a journalist with the Boston Globe outlines the ways in which Bush and Cheney have spent the past eight years attacking the very idea that the President has to follow the law. A sobering read, especially for those of us with high hopes for Obama's presidency, since power once claimed by the presidency is rarely relinquished. Takeover implicitly suggests that Obama should be judged not only on his actual policies, but on the degree to which he respects Congress and the rule of law.

Also started reading Stephen Clarkson’s Does North America Exist? Governing the Continent after NAFTA and 9/11. Clarkson’s work was one of the things that inspired me to do a PhD in North American relations, and 50 pages in he hasn’t disappointed yet.

(And since I’m blogging from the future, this tidbit of info might be of interest to all you Canadians: Prime Minister Hedy Fry. Who would’ve guessed?)