You’ve probably noticed, if you read this column regularly, that I think a lot about the interplay between public and private interests: the ways that personal motivations and decisions affect major public events like wars and scandals, but also the ways in which public, structural constraints affect people’s private decisions, shaping their lives and careers, and sometimes their safety. That idea has informed how I write about corruption (individual decisions to commit crimes, shaped by the broader corrupt equilibrium that means that’s the only way to get ahead), coups (if individual elites believe that the way to protect their personal interests is to support the coup, then the plot often succeeds), gender equality (women’s success and participation in public life is constrained by institutions that place the burden of preventing violence and overcoming discrimination on the victims rather than the perpetrators), and more. And it is a central theme of a big project that I’ve been working on with some of my colleagues, which you’ll hear more about soon. My reading list this week has focused on the private element of that equation: the decisions people make to win respect, preserve status or maintain personal relationships, and the implications that has for society as a whole — particularly its creative and literary progress. In “Lives of the Wives,” Carmela Ciuraru dissects five literary marriages, tracing in detail how the public literary success of writers like Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis grew out of the private support of their spouses at home.

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