"The Globe’s New Hub" from Newsweek by Isaac Stone Fish

Foreign policymakers distracted by recent history—the fallout from the end of the Cold War, the morasses of Iraq and Afghanistan—should shift their gazes from northern landmasses to southern seas. That’s the thrust of Robert Kaplan’s new book, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, which argues that the Indian Ocean “will demographically and strategically be a hub of the 21st-century world.” Kaplan, who has written prolifically on how geography plays into national destiny, takes the “rise of the rest” theory one step further in Monsoon. It’s not just the BRICs that are worth watching, he says, but the whole ocean and its rimland, from Indonesia to the Horn of Africa, which is lined with billions of people in dozens of countries. The area already accounts for 70 percent of the world’s traffic of petroleum products, and it will be the setting for the new Great Game between China, India, and the U.S., as each country vies for naval dominance of its waters. Forget Europe and Russia; it is the Indian Ocean’s rim, says Kaplan, that will be the epicenter of the next generation of global issues, including climate change, access to energy, and extremist politics.

Read that full Newsweek piece here. See also: Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground (Vintage Departures)

"Higher Learning" from Newsweek by Joel Schectman

For more than two decades, as the cost of college has climbed at twice the rate of inflation, critics have argued that bloated bureaucracies, overpaid faculty, and unnecessary amenities are inflating tuition. Yet in a new book—Why Does College Cost So Much?—economists Robert Archibald and David Feldman argue that college isn’t actually overpriced. The reason: although the total cost of attending an in-state, four-year public university has nearly doubled to $16,140 since 2000, the benefits that come with it have increased considerably, too. Indeed, over the same time period, the difference in wages between those who attend college and those who don’t has climbed by 20 percent. Yet in the aftermath of the recession, a more important question is who’s losing out in the process? Even though aid packages have risen by more than 50 percent since 2000, one recent study found that college enrollment could fall by 3.6 percent due to the housing bust, which has made it harder for families to finance their children’s education.

Read the full Newsweek article here. See also: Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, With a new preface, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much, Why Does College Cost So Much? [Hardcover]