I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.
The first thing you notice, coming to Israel from the Arab world, is that you have left the most courteous region of the globe and entered the rudest. The difference is so profound that you're left wo...
There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter.
Egyptians undergo an odd personality change behind the wheel of a car. In every other setting, aggression and impatience are frowned upon. The unofficial Egyptian anthem Bokra, Insha'allah, Malesh (To...
While Americans tried to justify and glorify their Indian-killers, George Armstrong Custer in particular,
For Robert Lee Hodge, it was also a way of life. As the Marlon Brando of battlefield bloating, he was often hired for Civil War movies.
With a
Hung be the Heavens in Scarlet
My life has been of but little worth mostly fild [sic] up with vanity.
John Brown, raised by disciplinarians, became one himself.
Anything you got to do with your own kind in secret, something's wrong with it. You feel bad about it inside.
Van Laar wasn’t a climate change denier, nor did he talk defensively of the United States’ appetite for oil. Rather, he confessed, I don’t give much of a fuck, and nobody I know does, either, because...
Seven severely depressed prisoners were listed as having died of nostalgia.
Lingering
Everywhere, it seemed, I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past had poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned remembra...
I came here from Kansas, he announced to his captive. This is a slave state. I want to free all the Negroes in this state. I have possession now of the United States armory, and if the citizens interf...
You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met.
The way I see it, King said, your great-grandfather fought and died because he believed my great-grandfather should stay a slave. I'm supposed to feel all warm inside about that?
Look at these buttons, one soldier said, fingering his gray wool jacket. I soaked them overnight in a saucer filled with urine. Chemicals in the urine oxidized the brass, giving it the patina of butto...
Crumpet. Fifty years later, Michener and the Yanks show up. Then come the travel hacks, who have to justify their fancy rooms and plane fare by telling us this shithole is paradise. He stubbed out his...