Book Bits: 7 March 2026

● The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History
Odd Arne Westad
Interview with author via Keen on America podcast
“If we let things continue in the direction that they are taking now, I think it is more likely than not that we will end up in some kind of Great Power war within the foreseeable future.” — Arne Westad
This conversation was recorded before the invasion of Iran, which makes what you are about to hear even more chilling. In new book, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History, Yale historian Arne Westad warns that the structural parallels between our multipolar 2020s and the world before the First World War are too striking to ignore—and he names the Middle East as one of the flashpoints that could spark a much broader conflagration.

● Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs
Lloyd Blankfein
Review via Reuters
Unlike many rivals, Goldman decided to hedge its exposure to U.S. subprime housing debt, in part by buying protection from American International Group (AIG.N), opens new tab against defaults in mortgage-backed securities. When the U.S. government – with Paulson as Treasury Secretary – bailed out the insurance giant in September 2008, many on Wall Street suspected the rescue had indirectly saved Goldman. Blankfein insists that the firm, which had also taken the precaution of buying insurance against an AIG default, would have survived its counterparty’s collapse. Still, whether the banks that sold that protection could have honoured their obligations in such a meltdown remains an open question.
Yet if Blankfein nimbly guided Goldman through the storm, he stumbled in the aftermath. Intense public scrutiny and criticism from politicians came ​as a shock for a firm unused to being a household ​name. Blankfein offers a spirited defence against Goldman’s many critics. ⁠Yet he acknowledges that bailouts helped polarise public opinion, clearing the way for Trump.

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