“You dirty son of a bitch. . . somebody’s got to beat you up and I hereby appoint myself.” Thus Edward Lansdale recalled addressing the CIA station chief in Saigon in the mid-1950s, when Lansdale was a CIA operative under cover of assistant air attaché at the American embassy. Whether or not his…
Few Americans noticed, but this past June, Muammar Qaddafi’s longtime spy chief Abdullah Senussi was apparently released from prison in Tripoli, where he had been sentenced to death in July 2015 for decades of officially sanctioned murders of his fellow Libyans. If Senussi was not…
Few Americans noticed, but this past June, Muammar Qaddafi’s longtime spy chief Abdullah Senussi was apparently released from prison in Tripoli, where he had been sentenced to death in July 2015 for decades of officially sanctioned murders of his fellow Libyans. If Senussi was not…
It makes sense that Mick Herron’s third novel about MI5 can be enjoyed without reading the others: Coming in at the middle of things is integral to his books. It's the condition of life, especially in a government bureaucracy. And the same could be said about intelligence gathering: It's what we…
Eligible is one of more than a hundred reworkings of Pride and Prejudice listed on Goodreads and it’s part of a recent publishing enterprise, The Austen Project, which has paired six Austen novels with six contemporary novelists. (None of the four released so far has been a critical success.) When…
Hurd's Bank, July 2015
Hurd's Bank, July 2015
What if a computer program revealed what people want to read, even down to the punctuation? It could tell the likelihood of any given book becoming a bestseller. It could tell whether a given book had been written by a man or a woman. It could even tell who wrote it, as long as there was a large…
"There’s nothing to be embarrassed about," Donald Trump spokesman Jason Miller told CNN when asked about his boss's reaction to the New York Post's publication of nude photos of his wife, Melania. "She's a beautiful woman."
If you’ve ever wanted to know why Albuquerque topless pole dancers get significantly higher tips on days when they are more fertile—and who doesn't?—this book is for you. Like many other aspects of human behavior, it has to do with the fact that men and women both try to maximize the success of…
Key West
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) may be the best-kept literary secret in English—a secret hiding in plain sight. His collected works take up a long bookshelf: 47 novels and 18 works of nonfiction. Once, most educated English and American households owned some of those volumes; today, there are still…
The Valley is marketed as a police procedural set in a remote American military outpost in Afghanistan, and it is a page-turner, all 448 of them. It’s also so cunningly constructed that I had to read it twice to be sure I understood everything that was going on—and there are still a few loose ends.…
In Ivanhoe, Prince John is thoroughly repugnant, displaying “a dissolute audacity, mingled with extreme haughtiness and indifference to the feelings of others,” as well as a “libertine disposition.” According to Stephen Church, Walter Scott’s character is “almost wholly a later concoction”—except,…
‘Why does the United States fight terror in Syria, Iraq, and Africa but not in Libya?” Idris al Magreibi, 40, a tall, lightly bearded member of Libya’s House of Representatives in Tobruk, was pacing the floor in the offices of the Libyan Mission to the United Nations as he raised the question. He…
When I finished The Kills, it was not with the sense of the world made right, or understood rightly, that the traditional novel aspires to, nor with the contemporary recognition that the author and I—ironists both!—share a cynical disillusionment. It was with a profound sense of loss, even anger,…
I'm poor in everything but ironies, and to be truthful, I’ve forgotten what’s so good about irony in the first place. It’s just the resting state of the universe. . . . Irony is not order, but it gives a shape to things.
It’s become nearly dogmatic in academic history that the writer ought to focus as much as he can on the disenfranchised, the “marginalized,” to avoid “privileging” the viewpoints of the upper classes, of men, and of white people. And so anxious are the historians not to perpetuate injustice that…
Paris
Writing at age 35, on the cusp between youth and the rest of life, I wanted to know what to do about being a rock critic when I was no longer young. (Easy—quit.) Now, 20 years later, and on the verge of leaving middle age, I look to science fiction to help me master the imaginable sting of death:…
Zwara, Libya
Sex addiction may not exactly be an existential threat to the United States, but as this book makes clear, the cultural trend which created this farcical “illness” has much graver consequences. The medicalizing of what was hitherto seen as a moral issue and the promotion of a ridiculously broad…
Zwara, Libya
Sabratha, Libya
And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The superego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into an ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede…
Tripoli
Zuwarah, Libya
Tripoli
Obari, Libya
Sabratha, Libya—“Girls were going to school under the Taliban! I know, because I was living in Kabul in 1999.” Youssef, 45, is as insistent on this untruth as this cheerful, equable man gets. A barrel-chested Libyan who spent ten years in Afghanistan under unclear circumstances, followed by eleven…
Libya—Here, west of Tripoli, the revolutionaries are fighting largely without direction from Benghazi's Transitional National Council. I’m traveling with three Sabratha fighters—Rowad, his brother Ahmed, and their cousin Mansur. The goal is to get to the frontline at Adjilat, where they plan to…
Benghazi, Libya
Sabratha, Libya—I went to the Roman ruins here on Sunday, and they seem to be fine. But it’s true that Qaddafi’s forces were based here when they attempted to defend Sabratha on the 14th of August. And they left behind mattresses, parts of their uniforms, and lots of trash.
Zwara, Libya—We’ve arrived in Zwara, which is about 70 miles from Tripoli and 35 miles from the Tunisian border. It’s impossible to get out in any direction, though one could get out to sea, if one fancied a long boat trip.
Zwara, Libya—The coastal city of Zwara, near the Libya-Tunisia border, is under siege by pro-Qaddafi forces who continue to shell the city and appear to be the last of Qaddafi’s forces still fighting in Libya.
Jadu, Libya—Yesterday, around 4 p.m., 10 Jadu fighters, who were attempting to cut off the retreat of a column of Qaddafi militiamen, were killed by an errant NATO missile strike near Badr, Libya. Two other fighters are missing. The loss of ten, who included two commanders, is an unimaginable…
Western Libya—Only about thirty volunteers of the three hundred strong Martyr Wasam Qaliyah Brigade are gathered around former Libyan army general Senussi Mohamed as he outlines the plan for the liberation of the coastal city of Sabratha, about 90 kilometers north from Qaddafi’s forces. Crouched in…
Qasr el-Haj, Jafara Valley, Libya
Djerba, Libya—As Saturday night wears on, the young men talk more and more confidently about an offensive they anticipate the next day, the big move 100 km north that will allow them to liberate their city of Sabratha. The mood is exultant, with some speculation that we will move forward at…
Benghazi
Art and Madness A Memoir of Lust Without Reason by Anne Roiphe Nan A. Talese, 240 pp., $24.95
Here’s an idea: Let’s try reducing the supply of insurgency in Afghanistan rather than reducing the demand for it. This notion—potentially as important an insight as the Laffer curve—comes from a 41-year-old book by a retired RAND Corporation scholar now entering his ninth decade, Charles Wolf Jr.
Kabul
Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan
The Birth (and Death) of the Cool
Who was David Galula?
The Accidental Guerrilla
The Enemy at the Gate
I turned carefully to scan the horizon. Nearby, French archeologists had recently uncovered 40 stupas and three Buddhist monasteries, but I couldn't see them. With just a foot of crumbling mud brick separating me from a 60-foot fall, I didn't push my luck.
Khost and Kandahar Provinces
In 1966 Germaine Tillion, a 59-year-old French structural anthropologist, published a slim volume entitled Le harem et les cousins (English title: The Republic of Cousins). This book, and Tillion herself, are largely unknown in the United States outside academic circles. Yet 40 years after its…
While news reports like to speak of a "resurgent Taliban" in Afghanistan, in the 14 provinces that make up Regional Command East in Afghanistan they are a defeated military force. Not only do the Taliban refuse to engage American forces directly, they have not won an engagement with the Afghan…
After three decades of visits to Italy, I stumbled upon the perfect small Italian city. It's a wonderfully livable haven which offers the best case for the Italian way of life, as lived in exquisite surroundings--not uncommon in Italy--but with a rare civility and sense of the common good.
Land of the High Flags
At this point in the war on terror, even people who think David Galula is a trendy new chef are quick to point to the need for cultural understanding in successful counterinsurgency. Often, they are quicker still to beat up on our military for supposedly ignoring this. They are quite sure that if…
Last February I woke up one morning in New Jersey and realized I couldn't take one more winter there. I had to move to a warm climate. I was thinking Scottsdale, but then the chance to work in my family's business in Dubai came up.
Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan
A Thousand Splendid Suns