Falke: Eight years later, I finally get the memo

I spent the better part of five years reading books about the most far-flung places and abstract social problems I could find. Fascinated by the Middle East, China and a smattering of cross-sectional studies about random social problems, the place I lived became something of a local-yokel backwater that I relegated to office hours. I came back to Caracas feeling like I needed to give Venezuela the same intellectual attention that I had been giving to Lebanon, the Nagorno Karabakh or the rise of the global sushi industry.