Year 12 IB Global Politics Paper 2 is notoriously challenging, but two of my students cracked the top band in 2024 in response to the following questions. (I wasn't tackling questions like this until my Master's in International Security Studies.)

After reading 'Small Things Like These' I turned to Claire Keegan's other fiction this weekend, reading 'So Late in the Day' & 'Foster'. Such precise Chekhovian prose to convey such magnitudes. Keegan's world is one where things mean things & need no overexplanation. A tonic for our prolix age.

I highly recommend Professor Lisa Wedeen's analysis of the Assad cult of personality in Syria in 'Ambiguities of Domination'. A book I found useful during my study of the strength and fragility of charismatic politics in North Korea.