Ben East Books

Category: Writing

  • Wines from Hungary

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    Ben East
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    I had a good time interviewing photographer and author Brian Neely some months back. His book, A Wine Filled Year, explores in photos and text the vineyards and wines and wine-making process from across the Hungarian countryside. The American Foreign Service Association was kind enough to post the exchange. I confess my opening is stilted (this…

  • Chain Your Muse

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    Ben East
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    I heard this gem last week, sound advice to anyone who bleeds ink: I keep my muse on a chain. And when I get 20 minutes I yank on the chain and say, ‘C’mon, muse.’ The man with the chain is Matthew Palmer, novelist and Foreign Service Officer, speaking at the American Foreign Service Association…

  • Diplomats and Terrorists

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    Ben East
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    Last month American Diplomacy included my review of Ambassador James R.  Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled. The book recounts a career that began with the U.S. military build-up in Vietnam and took the author to Burma, Chad, Benin, and Burundi, where he served as Ambassador, and Niger, where he served from 2001-2006 as Country Director…

  • Expeditionary Diplomacy

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    Ben East
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    The otherwise respectable American Diplomacy, which publishes ‘Foreign Service Despatches and Periodic Reports on U.S. Foreign Policy,’ included my review  of of Ambassador James R. Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled, in the latest lineup. The memoir recounts a career that started in expeditionary diplomacy for the State Department during the U.S. military…

  • The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade

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    Ben East
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    I want loyalty, I need loyalty No writing has influenced my work more than Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Not the Bible. Not the Constitution. Not even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is a pretty great book and should be thrown full force at anyone who tries to ban it. I wrote my first novel, Two…

  • Voice

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    Ben East
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    Paul Theroux’s voice in black and white, on the page, captivated me from the start: natural, authoritative, transferring all kinds of observation from the most minute cultural idiosyncrasy to the cruelest cut at character—fictional or real.  I started reading him 20 years ago with My Secret History. Until today, I’d known Theroux only through text…

  • We Have Better Writers

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    Ben East
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    Kevin Spacey tells Stephen Colbert why House of Cards makes for better viewing than the drama issuing daily from the ‘real’ White House. “I do believe we have better writers.” Season five binge-watching begins May 30. “I have to say, I think we’ve never been more relevant.” Earlier thoughts on the House of Cards opening credits… Not just some anodyne tour…

  • In Flight Entertainment for POTUS

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    Ben East
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    What are Trump & Co. reading as they wing their way to Saudi Arabia tonight? Two Pumps for the Body Man! This black comedy set in Saudi Arabia does for American diplomacy what Catch 22 did for military logic: The enemy in the War on Terror can’t kill us if our own institutions kill us…

  • The F-Bomb Drill

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    Ben East
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    A few years back my son told me about his day in kindergarten: ‘We practiced the truder drill. It’s like the fire drill, only instead of going outside we go to the back of the room. The teacher locks the door and pulls the shade. We all keep quiet.’ His anecdote about a potential armed…

  • Mother Land: A Review for Mothers Day

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    Ben East
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    Stephen King reviews Paul Theroux’s new novel, Mother Land at the New York Times this week (PeaceCorpsWorldwide brought it to my attention). King gives voice to the love-hate relationship so many readers have with the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, novelist and travel writer, whose prolific career spans nearly six decades and whose vicious pen reaches the furthest places on the…