I love how Boston is mecca for desi book tours. Tonight Jhumpa Lahiri is reading from Unaccustomed Earth, her new short story collection, at MIT Crazy Strata Center (thanks for the tip, and do join).

Today is also the release of my buddy Parag Khanna’s The Second World:

Since 2005 I have traveled through almost 40 countries… The Second World is my narrative of how such societies struggle to manage the pressures of globalization and how they respond to the competing influences of the leading superpowers: the United States, European Union, and China.

“A panoramic overview which boldly addresses the dilemmas of the world that our next president will confront.” – Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor

That’s right. Blurbed by the Zbigniew-ster. Interestingly, Parag is not as big an India booster as Fareed Zakaria — he thinks China will continue to surpass her. His much-reblogged NYT piece:

So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. [Link]

He’ll be reading at: