The May 2003 Atlantic Monthly merits a trip to the library or newsstand. While the great minds of the Boston Globe fret about Cessna 172s, Robert Baer’s “The Fall of the House of Saud” points out that a simple terrorist strike at one location in Saudi Arabia could remove from the world markets an amount equal to one third of the U.S.’s oil consumption. The article is rich with details on the more eccentric princes, such as Abdul Aziz who built a magnificent $4.6 billion palace and Islamic theme park that “includes a scale model of old Mecca, with actors attending mosque and chanting prayers twenty-four hours a day.” For those who slept through 9/11 and its aftermath, Baer recounts the Saudi funding and manning of Al-Qaeda and its continued obstruction of FBI investigations.
Gregg Easterbrook also has an article in this issue, about the Russian-American Sea Launch company that sails from Long Beach to the equator, fires off huge rockets into space, then sails back to LA. The cost is 1/10th that of the Space Shuttle for a comparable payload.
Timothy Ryback visits the Library of Congress and discovers the “remnants of the private library of Adolf Hilter, a man better known for burning books than for collecting them.” In fact Hitler had thousands of books and, even when his means were modest, spent lavishly on books and bookshelves. Hitler was not a huge fan of novels but enjoyed non-fiction, being motivated to underlining by a nineteenth century writer’s call for “the relocation of the Polish and Austrian Jews to Palestine”.
If you’re soaking in the bathtub and done with New Yorker magazine, give the May Atlantic a whirl.
Aw, man! Now I have to think of something else to build a scale model of when I get my billions!
You seem to miss the point. America and large parts of the West have ove a period of time become Show Biz….we have moved far away from the simple and perhaps dignified days of the past(Lincoln et al) and are now branded, managed by gurus, handlers, PR folks, Advertising, TV, etc Skim the surface. There may not be anything below it.