Robert D. Kaplan’s outstanding new book is about reflection, introspection, geopolitics, geography, culture, history, religion, civilization and travel in “the globe in miniature.”
In this insightful travelogue, Kaplan, geopolitical expert and bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and The Revenge of Geography, turns his perceptive eye to a region that for centuries has been a meeting point of cultures, trade, and ideas.
He undertakes a journey around the Adriatic Sea, through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, to reveal that far more is happening in the region than most news stories let on.
Often overlooked, the Adriatic is in fact at the center of the most significant challenges of our time, including the rise of populist politics, the refugee crisis, and battles over the control of energy resources.
Kaplan explores how the region has changed over his three decades of observing it as a journalist.
Kaplan “is a gem of a writer and his descriptions are vivid, original and lovely,” said a review on goodreads.com.
“Kaplan’s writing is comprehensive yet accessible, bursting at the seams with information.”
What We Are Reading Today: Adriatic
https://arab.news/geujh
What We Are Reading Today: Adriatic
What We Are Reading Today: ‘When the Bombs Stopped’ by Erin Lin
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In “When the Bombs Stopped,” Erin Lin investigates the consequences of the US bombing campaign across post conflict Cambodia.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘When the Bombs Stopped’
- Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land
Author: ERIN LIN
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In “When the Bombs Stopped,” Erin Lin investigates the consequences of the US bombing campaign across post conflict Cambodia.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Spike’ by Mark Humphries
We see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions.
Neuroscientists call these blips “spikes.” Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In “The Spike,” Mark Humphries takes readers on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Lost Souls’ by Sheila Fitzpatrick
When World War II ended, about 1 million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria.
These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands.
Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In “Lost Souls,” Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs.
What We Are Reading Today: Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant
- Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat
Author: Audrey Borowski
Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist and courtier navigating the learned and courtly circles of early modern Europe and the Republic of Letters.
Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat and in Germany at the court of Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover. She challenges the image of Leibniz as an isolated genius, revealing instead a man of multiple identities whose thought was shaped by a deep engagement with the social and intellectual milieus of his time. Borowski shows us Leibniz as he was known to his contemporaries, enabling us to rediscover him as an enigmatic young man who was complex and all too human.
