Books, Articles, and Items of Academic Interest

Global Swarming

Woe to the reader who lacks access to the Internet or who disdains it as a source of news and commentary. Increasingly he misses the main story. In Lost Horizon, James Hilton’s fable about a timeless kingdom lost in the fastness of Tibet, the lamaery is content to get the British newspapers delivered a year after their publication. Conway, the hero of the story, complains, “Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year, you know.”

Chang, the lama’s representative, replies, “Nothing of importance, my dear sir, that could not have been foreseen in 1920, or that will not be better understood in 1940.” Chang is interested in world events, but only “in due course.” From a sufficiently lofty perspective, human affairs are always the same dreary story of vanity and suffering, from