From the 49th floor skydeck of the sleek 68-storey Bitexco Financial Tower, Ho Chi Minh, formerly Saigon, looked very much like a city on the move. When I was last here, in 1998, Ho Chi Minh had a uniformly low skyline, seemed ragged at the edges and was still in the process of recovering from a […]
Jasmine French, an attractive and pretentious middle-aged woman with a taste for Hermes accessories, Chanel jackets and Louis Vuitton luggage, is down on her luck. Her husband, Hal, a shady businessman in the mould of Bernard Madoff, is serving a prison sentence for fraud and who knows what else. The federal government has seized their […]
World War II was not just another destructive conflict between warring nations, but a nationalist crusade on the part of Germany to acquire territory, attain hegemony, disseminate Nazi ideology and murder Jews on a massive industrial scale. When Germany attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, touching off an international conflagration that dragged on for six […]
My younger daughter was due to start a new job and wanted a vacation before getting down to work. I decided to join her, and we agreed on Costa Rica, which turned out to be a wise choice. In less than a week, Lauren and I visited an active volcano, rode a horse to a […]
A little more than a month before his inauguration as president of the United States in January 1969, Richard Nixon dispatched William Scranton, the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, to the Middle East on a fact-finding tour of five Arab nations and Israel. His mandate was to assess the current state of the Arab-Israeli conflict […]
No one doubts that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey since 2003, is a very tough man. He has demonstrated that in recent years, in run-ins with Israel, Syria, the United States, and his own citizens. In that sense, he epitomizes the Turkish character. Historically a warrior people, the Turks are a proud […]
I lit the candle. I watched. I watched the candle. I heard it groan, I felt its moan, I saw it flicker, I heard it sigh, I watched it almost die. I watched my breath sway the flame As it flickered hesitantly, Writhing, Trying to decide if to live or die, Or […]
The Attack is a most unusual movie, unfolding against the backdrop of a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel and grappling with the complexities of its messy aftermath. Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and now playing in theatres in Canada and the United States, The Attack is unconventional because its main protagonists […]
I remember a photo of Ima in Sofia. A beauty to behold, Striking a movie star pose. Her crisp school uniform is long gone. The faded flannel nightgown is worn. I try to convince, not knowing how to begin. It’s worth getting up, It’s worth getting out of bed, Getting dressed. […]
I wanted to “wake up in that city that doesn’t sleep,” to paraphrase Frank Sinatra in the song New York, New York. The opportunity to do so presented itself in mid-summer, when my wife Etti and I decided to spend several days in New York City. As a couple, we hadn’t been in the […]