Tomorrow is the first day of my last semester as an International Relations student at Boston University. My courselist as originally laid out here has since been updated; the revised version with accompanying booklists and syllabi outlines (principal required texts only so far; there are several other shorter excerpts and recommended readings for most of the classes that I've ommitted) is below.

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I know metafilter discovered the thing a year-and-a-half ago, but I found it today and it clearly needs rediscovery because it is beyond clever.

Using the "people-who-bought-this-are interested-in-that" feature of amazon.com, the Amazing Baconizer takes you through the steps of separation from any one item (book, CD or movie) on amazon.com to another. You can set up the start and end yourself, or you can do random walks. Some are hysterically funny, others uncover some interesting gems on the path from one personal favorite to another, apparently totally unrelated, personal favorite.

Beyond the simple fun of a "six degrees of separation game," the Baconizer actually has some fairly neat implications for social networks -- including why smokers are critical to successfully navigating bureaucracies. But enough of theory, it's his centrality charts that are quite entertaining.   more »

I'm taking four classes this semester, and thought I might as well post my collected reading lists for them in lieu of more detailed commentary at this time since it's getting on rather late. If there's an Amazon account you'd like me to link through, I'll go back and edit this entry tomorrow with the appropriate links, but for now here's the list...   more »

Matt Yglesias has been kind enough to post a portion of his reading list; here's mine, in no particular order:

• Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel


• Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid


• Taliban by Ahmed Rashid


• Ghost Wars by Steve Coll


• The Age of Sacred Terror by Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin


• Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror by Ronan Gunaratna


• Inside Al Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World's Deadliest Terrorist Organization by Mohamed Sifaoui


• Holy War, Inc. by Peter Bergen


• The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk


• The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in The Asian Hearthland by Karl E. Meyer


• Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger


• Boyd : The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram


• Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism
by John Cooley

• Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer


• Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan


• Nasser: The Last Arab
by Said Aburish

• City: Urbanism and its End by Douglas Rae


• Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile


• The Fragmentation of Afghanistan by Barnett Rubin


• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson


• Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer


• Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World by Stephen Glain


• Churchill's Folly by Christopher Catherwood


• Inventing Iraq by Toby Dodge


• The Shi'i of Iraq by Yitzhak Nakash


• The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas P. Barnett


• The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey by Fuad Ajami


• State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Francis Fukuyama


• Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren


• The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East [Again!] by Abraham Rabinovich


• The Missing Peace by Dennis Ross


• The Future of Political Islam by Graham Fuller


• Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward


• American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips


• Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke


• Republic of Fear by Kanan Makiya


• Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind


• Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi


• The Secret History of the Iraq War by Yossef Bodansky


• From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman


• Winning Modern Wars by Wesley Clark


• The Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann


• The Middle East by Bernard Lewis


• In an Uncertain World by Robert Rubin


• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer


• Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard


• Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz


• In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bagwati


• America Unbound by Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay

Not all of these were worth the effort, obviously, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a few. At some point I will pen short reviews of these; for now I'm just writing them down so that I have them in one place.

In the meantime, feel free to ask any questions or add any recommendations below, dear reader(s).

(updated twice to reflect my refreshed memory)

Irving over at Tacitus very kindly provided a comment that has links to the reading lists of all the branches of the armed forces (other than the Army's, which were are covered in our previous post). He also links to a list put together by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri.

There's quite a variety of approach. But somewhere within this collection there's almost sure to be at least a good start    more »