Graeme Wood
Graeme Wood has written for The Atlantic since 2006. Before then, he lived, worked, and traveled in the Middle East. He studied languages at Indiana University and at the American University in Cairo.
Recently by Graeme Wood
May 20 2009, 1:16PM
Will Japan Be Canada?
Today Japan released first-quarter economic figures, and pleasantly surprised itself by noting that its economy is cratering just a little bit less swiftly than everyone thought. GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 15 percent, more than twice as severely as the US, and faster than at any point since Japan started tracking GDP in 1955.
Feb 18 2009, 8:43AM
India's railway king
Lalu Prasad Yadav, the demagogic yokel who has headed Indian Railways since 2004, unveiled a preliminary 2009-2010 budget last week. It smells of roses: $19.3 billion in gross receipts -- a jump of 13 percent -- plus a massive expansion of services in the coming year. His opponents, who ran the Railways deep in the red for a decade before Lalu took over, say it's easy to make huge profits running a railroad, if you overload the wagons and risk train wrecks. (As if on cue, a train derailed and killed 12 in Orissa just hours after Lalu presented in the Lok Sabha.)
How has a crooked, semiliterate hillbilly succeeded in managing the world's second-largest employer to profitability? Over at The American, I have a profile of Lalu, and an exploration of how started as a national laughingstock and ended as India's most improbably successful bureaucrat (but still a national laughingstock).
How has a crooked, semiliterate hillbilly succeeded in managing the world's second-largest employer to profitability? Over at The American, I have a profile of Lalu, and an exploration of how started as a national laughingstock and ended as India's most improbably successful bureaucrat (but still a national laughingstock).
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.