Only the implementation ofa Marshall Plan with an eye toward business development can bring sub-Saharan Africa out of economic futility.

The element of danger that night at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies belied the image of think tanks as places where long-winded academics offer narrow arguments in airless rooms. Foreign policy sometimes is born in these discussions, and as a result, the world comes to listen.

The political economy of taxation offers important lessons for the developing world.

Is the now sixty-year-old Marshall Plan a good model for increased aid to Africa?

The most interesting phenomenon on Russia's literary scene today is the popularity of the Erast Fandorin mysteries by Grigoriy Shalvovich Chkhartishvili, who writes as Boris Akunin.