In 2005 Harrell Fletcher spent a month in Vietnam as part of an international artists retreat.While there Fletcher spent a lot of time at The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, a memorial museum for what is referred to in Vietnam as The American War. The Museum used to be called The Museum of American War Crimes, then it was The War Crimes Museum then we got friendly with Vietnam again and it was renamed The War Remnants Museum.He says "I was so affected by what I saw at the museum that I went back several times and...
It’s Hemingway For McCain
John McCain was in the Hamptons last weekend attending a fund-raiser at the home of real estate developer Bill Mack. The $2,300 a plate cocktail party was organized by a committee that included New York Republican heavyweights Henry Kissinger, Georgette Mosbacher, publisher Steve Forbes and former Senator Alfonse D’Amato.During the Q&A that followed his talk McCain was asked about his reading life.“I am a voracious reader. I read all the time,” said McCain who carries three or four books with him all the time.The three books currently on hand are:“Smyrna,” by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, about the conflict between Greeks and...
A Payne in the Bush : Fundraising Scandal at the Bush Presidential Library
With no more campaigns to raise money for it seems that the Bush machine has set its sites on the Bush Presidential Library.In the spirit of Sacha Baron Cohen the Sunday Times of London arranged and recorded an interview between a leading GOP activist Stephen Payne and two men thought to be acting on behalf of the exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan.Payne, who also sits on the Homeland Security advisory board, is heard offering meetings with high-level officials of the Bush Administration in return for a hefty donation to the Bush Presidential Library. For somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with...
Summer Reading : F.B.I. Style
The F.B.!. has come with a summer reading list. They are on the lookout for the following books:150 copies of Understanding Terror Networks30 copies of Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times130 copies of The Koran (Penguin Classics version)150 copies of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001180 copies of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill30 copies of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror 30 copies of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us 30 copies of Islam: A Short HistoryThey also...
Barack Obama’s Reading Life
"If Obama is elected, he'll be one of the most literary presidents in recent memory" says Laura Miller in her piece, "Barack by the Books", at Salon.com. Miller takes a "look at some of the formative books in his intellectual and political life to see if we can learn more about the man behind the movement.""Obama the reader blossomed as an undergraduate at Occidental College in California and, especially, during the two monkish years he spent finishing up his degree at Columbia University in New York. "I had tons of books," he told his biographer, David Mendell ("Obama: From Promise...