Archival Memories and Moments
Some current reading and the afterlives / memory studies turn in Terrorism Studies.
A. I’m currently reading Professor Hazem Kandil’s PhD-to-book The Power Triangle: Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). It has case studies on Iran, Turkey / Turkiye, and Egypt. Professor Kandil has a Google Scholar profile. The 2021 syllabus for his unit War & Revolution is here.
I found The Power Triangle after submitting a UNSW student essay on the Iran coup d’etat in 1953 (available here). The Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations role is well known (Operation TPAjax - the TP referred to Iran’s communist Tudeh Party). I found more when researching the essay, which has insights from area studies, revisionist histories, analytic case studies, and energy security and oil geopolitics. I found some new things as well: I was unaware of TPBEDAMN the CIA’s psychological operations / warfare initiative which used black propaganda and that mobilised protesters (academic study here).
B. I recently posted photos of Luka Puppy the adorable three-year-old Labrador who I live with for Harvard University Professor Cass Sunstein (here) and energy / commodities trader Joel Rubano (here). Now, Professor Sunstein has a new article on the availability heuristic. Of course, it has Labradors. You might consider even buying a Labrador (preferably from a rescue shelter) and seeing what living with them is like. Professor Sunstein also today made me aware of The Routledge Handbook of Classical Realism being available for free on Amazon Kindle. Do check it out.
C. Today’s MIT OCW free course is Energy Economics created by MIT Professor Paul Joskow.
D. The New Institutionalism is very important in economics, political science, and environmental sustainability. If you are unfamiliar with it, a 1996 review essay in the journal Political Science (here) may be helpful.
E. MIT’s influential Associate Professor Joshua Shifrinson has a new book called Archival Research For International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2026). The Amazon Kindle edition is available now; the hardcover and paperback editions will be out in November 2026.
F. I hope to see Yasujiro Ozu’s classic Tokyo Story (1953) this week. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott on the influential film.
G. There are moments in life when you improvise - and experience the transcendent. U2 perform Bad at the first Live Aid concert (1985) and Bono reaches into the crowd as a global audience watches . . .
H. Netflix continues its award-winning Turning Point series with Generation 9/11. This series continues the afterlives / memory studies turn in Terrorism Studies also signalled in Richard Beck’s book Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life (New York and London: Verso Books, 2025). The Netflix series also includes the so-called Forever Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I. A CARP Research Lab lecture on the political psychology based profiling of leaders.
J. An 8-hour series of lectures by HangukQuant on algorithmic / quantitative trading in the Python programming language.
K. Nobel laureate (1997) and MIT Professor Robert C. Merton on how to meet the financial challenges of retirement.