Ben East Books

Grid of posts 2×3

  • Chain Your Muse

    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 Read more

  • Diplomats and Terrorists

    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 Read more

  • ‘Tough Guy’ Rights

    Representative Chris Collins is acting tough. “Here’s what’s not up for debate,” the New York Republican wrote in Monday’s Washington Post. “From now on, I’ll be exercising my Second Amendment right to carry a firearm as I travel my district.” Collins has some right to feel the need for protection. A gunman went ballistic last Read more

  • Expeditionary Diplomacy

    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 Read more

  • Witch Hunt

    Let’s not kid ourselves. Among the many mistakes in Arthur Miller’s talented life (he divorced Marilyn Monroe after just 5 yrs) was his choice of title for The SINGLE GREATEST Story About American History’s Salem Witch Trials. The Crucible. The Crucible? What’s this, Chemistry class? Are we grinding elements here to torch them with a Read more

  • We, the People from U.N.C.L.E.

    Enough! The past eight days has brought just too much to keep up with. How do you address and condemn one awful imposition on our sanity without condoning all the others by omission? And how can you possibly write up all that condemnation?! This quandary has me in a state of total paralysis. Let me Read more