I’ve just read 520 pages of a 544 page paperback on the flight back from China. If you are interested in sampling the seismic political and cultural shifts in China over the last century, I can’t think of a better book I have read.

See my note below. I will be hosting a live streaming discussion with New Yorker Washington Correspondent Jane Mayer on her new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.

Tuesday morning, between 9:30 am and 11:00 am EST, I am hosting a conversation at the New America Foundation with New Yorker Washington correspondent Jane Mayer about her news-busting new book on the torture-promoting War Council ecosystem that Vice President Cheney and one of his most tenacious consigliari, David Addington, constructed after 9-11.

China has some intense security — sort of the opposite of what I found not long ago in Kuwait. While heading home from the Middle East, I walked through security boarding a United Airlines plane and the buzzer went off. No problem — I was just waved through and wasn’t searched.

I’ll be spending most of the day on Sunday flying back to the United States after a couple of eye-opening weeks in Asia. But a hat tip to the 99-year old Michael DeBakey who just passed away and who did change the world with his pioneering work on heart transplants and bypass operations.

I’m over in Hong Kong with a crazy schedule and round of meetings — but rumors, good ones, still reach me. The latest — which I wholeheartedly endorse — is that Senator Chuck Hagel may be on the verge of endorsing Barack Obama for President.

I made a bad mistake at a wedding not too long ago — in Big Fork, Montana. I was sitting next to the sister-in-law of the bride who had to give a toast, something with flourish and some punch.

Will write more soon. Off to Hong Kong today.

There has been a ton of interest among the people I have met in China over the last ten days in the US presidential elections.

Supporters of the surge give many reasons for the dramatic and real reduction of violence in Iraq over the past 16 months. These range from the rise of the Sahwa movement to General Petraeus’s new counterinsurgency strategy to the newfound independence of Nuri al-Maliki’s government, backed by strengthened Iraqi Security Forces.