Rapid Travel Chai

Dateline: Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, Oslo, Norway.

Let’s keep it simple this week. If you don’t read the Christmas Specials in The Economist, start now. This year’s collection ranges from America’s anti-semitic lynching to the first boob seflie and closes with a feel good story from my home state of Catholic monks preserving the Islamtic texts of Timbuktu:

• What the Führer means for Germans today – Seventy years after Adolf Hitler’s death, how Germans see him is changing
• Cuban baseball crisis – The downside of warming relations with America
• Straddling two worlds – Worldly, pluralist, hedonistic—and Muslim, too
• Park life – A day in the life of one of the capital’s few green spaces
• Out with the old – Why the bottom has dropped out of the antiques market
• Whatever should I do? – To understand how societies evolve, read the problem pages
• That dear old oak in Georgia – The long afterlife of America’s only anti-Semitic lynching
• Going global – Secrets of the world’s best businesspeople
• The Black Chamber – The man who made Edward Snowden inevitable
• Lèse humanité – What happened when slaves and free men were shipwrecked together
• The gauge of history – A train journey north shows how Russia has evolved—and regressed
• Bosom buddies – The surprising story of America’s first boob selfie
• The emperor’s mighty brother – Demand for an aphrodisiac has brought unprecedented wealth to rural Tibet—and trouble in its wake
• Faith’s archivists – Catholic monks in Minnesota are helping to save a trove of Islamic treasures in Mali

Closing with a bit of humor: