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Download Issue WQCovSum09_Sub.Final 6/17/09 2:11 PM Page 2 Th Message in a Genome Matthew Stremlau WILSON Rediscovering Central Asia Living with S. Frederick Starr Microbes By Joel L. Swerdlow Maps in Literature The WILSON QUARTERLY and Ari D. Johnson Max Byrd SURVEYING THE WORLD OF IDEAS QUARTERLY Divided By James Morris Thrift THRIFT The Double-Edged Virtue Daniel Akst Robert Z. Aliber Michael Pettis Martin Walker S 2009 V l 33 N 3 SUMMERS U M M E R 20092009 $6.95$6.95 On the Fast Track or the Fat Track? The Price of The Evolution Perfection of Obesity Individualism and Michael L. Power Society in the Era of and Jay Schulkin Biomedical Enhancement “Compelling, well written, Maxwell J. 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INNOVATIONS: TECHNOLOGY, GOVERNANCE, GLOBALIZATION – entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges INTERNATIONAL SECURITY – the #1 journal in international relations GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS – exploring world views on the changing environment DAEDALUS MIT Press Journals – the official journal of the American Academy of Arts 238 Main Street, Suite 500 and Sciences Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: 617-253-2889 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL US/Canada: 800-207-8354 – now celebrating its 25th anniversary Fax: 617-577-1545 http://mitpressjournals.org/ Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft Discover the Secrets to Understanding Style and Improving Your Writing with a Professor from One of the Nation’s Top Writing Schools reat writing begins—and ends— mathematics for intelligent, engaged, adult with the sentence. Understanding lifelong learners. If a course is ever less than Gthe variety of ways to construct completely satisfying, you may exchange it sentences is important to enhancing your for another, or we will refund your money appreciation of great writing and potentially promptly. improving your own. Lecture Titles Get the answers to your questions 1. A Sequence of Words about writing and style in Building Great 2. Grammar and Rhetoric moodboard/Corbis. Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft, © 3. Propositions and Meaning taught by Professor Brooks Landon of the About Your Professor 4. How Sentences Grow University of Iowa—one of the nation’s top 5. Adjectival Steps writing schools. In this lively 24-lecture Dr. Brooks Landon is a Professor of English 6. The Rhythm of Cumulative Syntax course, you explore the myriad ways we think and Collegiate Fellow at The University 7. Direction of Modification about, talk about, and write sentences. You of Iowa and Director of The University of 8. 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Offer Good Through: September 13, 2009 The WILSON QUARTERLY Summer 2009 volume xxxiii, number 3 The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars FEATURES www.wilsonquarterly.com COVER STORY every person should anchor our understanding of the post-genome world. 49 THRIFT: The Double-Edged Virtue 26 This Is Not a Map Any solution to the global economic crisis will re- By Max Byrd | Writers from Robert Louis Stevenson quire a thriftier America and, paradoxically, a less to A. A. Milne have mapped their fictional worlds— thrifty Asia. A dose of economic sobriety may be just often as much for their own benefit as for readers’. what the United States needs, but a difficult global rebalancing lies ahead as spendthrift Americans and 33 Rediscovering Central Asia the prodigious savers of Asia adjust to new realities. By S. Frederick Starr | A thousand years ago, Saving Yourself | By Daniel Akst Central Asia was the center of the intellectual world. The Global Savings Tsunamis | By Robert Z. Aliber Today, it is barely a blip on the radar except when What Makes Mr. Zhang Save? |By Michael Pettis trouble erupts. That will change if Central Asians take The New Normal |By Martin Walker inspiration from their glorious past. 44 Divided By 16 Message in a Genome By James Morris | Oversharing is the newest social By Matthew Stremlau| The human genome is disease. A hundred Facebook friends aren’t worth a vastly more complex than scientists thought just half dozen of the to-the-death, flesh-and-blood sort. a few years ago. Genetic differences, though dif- ON THE COVER: Ladder of Fortune, an 1875 lithograph by Currier & Ives. ficult to interpret, dominate our attention, but The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow the 99.5 percent of DNA that is the same in Wilson International Center for Scholars. 2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2009 DEPARTMENTS 14 EDITOR’S COMMENT Repeating History in Juárez, 98 It’s Our Turn to Eat: from Mexican Studies The Story of a Kenyan 15 LETTERS The First Rule of Holes, from Whistleblower. By Michela Wrong Dissent Reviewed by G.
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