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Rethinking U.S. Election Law

Erica Frazier. LSE Review of Books
This is an excellent and engaging read that exposes the structural flaws in the US government system and provides tangible, achievable proposals to address them, writes reviewer Frazier.

The Saccharine History of Candy Corn

Rebecca Rupp National Geographic
Halloween has a centuries’-long tradition of costumes and scary stuff, but the door-to-door visitations for collecting candy started after the end of WWII sugar rationing, in the late 1940s.

I Confess

Pauletta Hansel Rattle
With the great frustration of politics in our times, the poet Pauletta Hansel concedes that the worst thoughts inevitably, spontaneously, come to mind.

We Are Conquerors: Biographing Ben-Gurion

Adam Shatz London Review of Books
A bio of Israel's first prime minister by a leading Israeli journalist views Ben Gurion as not only a committed Zionist but an early advocate of "Greater Israel" and, like those succeeding him, a steadfast enemy of rapprochement with Palestinians.

How We Can Avert Climate Apocalypse

John Horgan Scientific American
Here is a book that talks about the link between climate change and armed conflict. As reviewer Horgan points out: "The global cooperation we need to solve global warming can also help us solve war."

Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen Is A Reckoning Worth Waiting For

Danette Chavez AV Club
HBO's Watchmen's writing presents through-lines from slavery to Reconstruction to the so-called “alt-right”; from, as Rage Against The Machine once put it, those who work forces to those who burn crosses.

Three Flats

Philip C. Kolin
Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin traces the evolution of his childhood neighborhood in Chicago that went from Czech to Hispanic.