CATEGORIES

You know a book that begins with recounting the moments preceding a warzone ambush isn’t going to end well. That’s if you hadn’t already guessed so from the title, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story. Or from the quote on its opening pages from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War: ‘In such [...]

History is written by the victors, or so the saying goes, so it’s rare but eye-opening to read the version written by those not celebrating the spoils. And none are more eye-opening than the memoir of convicted people smuggler Ali Al Jenabi, the ‘Oskar Schindler of Asia’, which shows ‘queue-jumping boat people’ and the people [...]

I have to fess up that I find the war in Iraq—replete with obfuscating, PR-oriented euphemisms such as ‘the war on terror’ that make the incursions sound much more palatable, heroic, and successful than they are—completely and utterly bewildering. In some ways I find the issues underpinning the war so complex that I worry that [...]