TweetNew York- I have an article out today on the French-led external military intervention in central and northern Mali which began in mid-January. I woke up this morning excited to have a new piece out only to see that there had been a double suicid...
Alberto Manguel
One day in 1842, the thirty-eight-year old Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his notebook: “To write a dream, which shall resemble the real course of a dream, with all its inconsistency, its eccentric...
Background Briefing by a Senior State Department Official
Special BriefingSenior State Department Official
Amman, Jordan
May 22, 2013
QUESTION: [Senior State Department Official], did the opposition firmly commit to attending the Geneva conference...
James Gleick
Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
by Lee Smolin
We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of ...
Joint Statement of the Participating Countries in the Amman Ministerial Meeting on Syria
Media NoteOffice of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
May 22, 2013
The Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar and the Foreign Ministers of Egyp...
Martin Filler
The fact that many architects seem compelled to seduce and dominate those around them—whether patrons, junior partners, paramours, or some combination thereof—has been part of the popular image of th...
Nathaniel Rich
The great Northeast Blackout of August 2003 passed without Robert Silvers’s notice—or at least without him giving the impression of noticing. While I and the other assistants, racing to the windows ...
Meets With Staff and Families of Embassy Muscat
RemarksJohn KerrySecretary of State
Embassy Muscat
Muscat, Oman
May 22, 2013
AMBASSADOR HOLTZ: Good morning, everybody. It is my very great pleasure to welcome Secretary of State John F. Kerry to Oma...
Yemen National Unity Day
Press StatementJohn KerrySecretary of State
Washington, DC
May 21, 2013
On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I extend my warmest wishes to the Yemeni people on their 23rd National Unity Day.
Ye...
Jen Psaki
SpokespersonDaily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
May 16, 2013
Index for Today's Briefing
ISRAEL/PALESTINIANS
U.S. Position on Engagement with Hamas Unchanged
MIDDLE EAST PEACE
...
Three weeks ago Egypt walked out of a preparatory committee meeting for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in protest at the lack of progress toward holding a conference on a weapons of mass destruction (WMD)–free z...
Jenny Uglow
Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
by Bee Wilson
Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat combines a passionate gathering of informatio...
Andrew Butterfield
In the summer of 1494, soon after his engagement, Albrecht Dürer made a startlingly intimate drawing of his fiancée Agnes Frey. One might have expected a twenty-three-year-old to depict his betrot...
Roger Cohen
Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran
by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett are unusua...
Eurasia Group's weekly selection of essential reading for the political risk junkie – presented in no particular order. As always, feel free to give us your feedback or selections by tweeting at us via @EurasiaGroup or @ianbremmer.
Elizabeth Drew
References to Watergate, impeachment, even Richard Nixon, are being tossed around these days as if they were analogous to the current so-called scandals. But the furors over the IRS, Benghazi, and the J...
Mark Ford
The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov
by Andrea Pitzer
The Tragedy of Mister Morn
by Vladimir Nabokov, translated from the Russian by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy
...
As revolutions swept the Middle East in 2011, many saw it as the dawn of an age of democratization. More recently, many have begun to see it as an age of Islamicization. It is more accurate, however, to see the region entering an age of proxy wars, on ...
Jerome Groopman
The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum
by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek
I never learned to type. The best I can do is hunt and peck with two fingers while lookin...
My new book MUSIC, CULTURE & CONFLICT IN MALI takes an in-depth look at the crisis that overtook Mali in January 2012 and lead to a ten-month occupation of the northern two-thirds of the country by armed jihadi groups. The book examines the roots of those tumultuous events and their ef- fect on the music and culture of the country. There are chapters on music under occupation in the north, the music scene in Bamako, the destruction of mausoleums in the north, the fate of Mali’s precious manuscripts, Mali’s film and theatre industries and the response to the crisis from writers, poets, journalists, intellectuals and film-makers.
BOOK EXTRACT: “Tisrawt is a microcosm of Touareg society,” Melissa explains. “That’s to say, it is a group of people who come from many different clans. Some are pro-MNLA. Some are pro Ansar ud-Dine. Some are pro-Mali. Others say that it’s all nonsense. And the aim is to understand each other, to live together and work together on a common project.”
BOOK EXTRACT: In important ways, the scenes of vandalism and destruction that were played out in Timbuktu following the Salafist takeover in April 2012 weren’t new at all. There was something very old about them. Mostly white Arabic or Hassaniya speaking men from the northern deserts were ‘teaching’ the blacks how to worship Allah in the ‘proper’ manner.
BOOK EXTRACT: Life in the early 1990s was convivial. There was music. Women felt free to come and go. Some people smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. The bonds between those young Touareg, their music and their culture seemed strong and unbreakable. No one quite knows why some senior Touareg figures from the northeast, including Iyad Ag Ghali, began to succumb to the message of Pakistani preachers belonging to Tablighi Jama’at.
Anne Applebaum
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell
The End of Men and the Rise of Women
by Hanna Rosin
Sheryl Sandber...
