Weekend Reads: Advice for Obama’s China Trip, Effects of Spanking Your Kids, and More

New this week

Obama’s trip to Beijing tomorrow. Experts from the John L. Thornton China Center have advice for President Obama as he heads to China for an official state visit with Xi Jinping.

Spending per voter in the 2014 Senate races. John Hudak and Grace Wallack break down campaign spending to see how much your vote cost.

Obama’s mistaken outreach to Iran. Suzanne Maloney says Obama’s personal appeal to Iran’s supreme leader shows a profound misunderstanding of the Iranian leadership.

Effects of spanking your kids. This memo from Richard Reeves and Emily Cuddy is easily the most scholarly examination of corporal punishment you’ve read in a while.

Find out what your city trades…and where. Dive into this new interactive from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program to see what commodities your city is trading to other cities domestically and globally.

Lessons on democratic transitions in Africa. Vera Songwe finds lessons from the situation in Burkina Faso for other African nations making progress toward building representative democracies.

What the election means for health care. Kavita Patel highlights three areas of health policy to watch as the GOP takes control of the Senate.

What our experts are reading

If you haven’t read it, check out this fine inside account of how the GOP did it. (@EJDionne)

Nice feature article by Peter Coy on contemporary relevance of Keynes’s prescriptions. (@EswarSPrasad)

This speech by Jack Goldsmith will really discomfit Obama loyalists.Clearheaded and compelling. (@BenjaminWittes)

Very cool graphics on ISIS, which Reuters regularly updates. (@Doranimated)