Each year at this time, David Brooks makes a list of best magazine essays of the year. We read and taken note of most of them. Here's one I missed.
The region around Afghanistan is now regarded as a global backwater, but S. Frederick Starr’s “Rediscovering Central Asia,” in The Wilson Quarterly, is an eye-opening look at what once was. A thousand years ago, those mountains were the intellectual center of the world. Central Asians invented trigonometry, used crystallization as a means of purification, estimated the Earth’s diameter with astonishing precision and anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution. Starr describes glittering cities and a flowering of genius. He also describes the long decline — the Sunni-Shia split played a role — and modern glimmers of revival.
Image: Asian Art Museum