The notion that those in authority can account for and control (if not erase) life’s myriad dangers took centre stage in the pandemic. Allison Schrager argues in City Journal that society has fallen victim to the delusion that life can be lived with zero risk. Schrager proposes that a little uncertainty can reveal one’s true potential.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


