Recommended Reading

Bill Browder, the famous hedge fund manager whose grandfather was the head of the Communist Party in the United States, is someone I have known for years. My personal experience in Russia is limited to a trip I took with a group from The RAND Corporation to meet senior officials and oligarchs shortly after the Russian financial crisis of 1998. The place was corrupt from top to bottom. At the top, a $5 billion IMF loan to Russia’s central bank disappeared in a matter of days. At the bottom, an elderly beggar I engaged in conversation outside of a MacDonald’s told me how much she had to pay for the privilege of begging in that particular location.

Dave Hickey is little known outside the art world, and within it is known as an iconoclast and provocateur. If you were looking to challenge your intellectual perspective, critic Dave Hickey crafts sharp arguments. His latest, Pirates and Farmers: Essays on the Frontiers of Art, contains brilliantly written essays about art and culture that captivate with style as well as insight. In fact, should Hickey ever be true to his word in quitting his art critic’s title, we can find relief in the intellectual nourishment his prose will always provide, regardless of topic.