Citizenship | Literature
Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.
What began as a bold experiment in grassroots service produced future ambassadors to help guide U.S. diplomacy through seven decades of global upheaval.
Read, Listen, Watch
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Surrounded by reality, I had to accept that it didn’t matter what the mirror said about the objects on the road. I just had to make my way home.
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I ventured out this morning, the most dangerous shopping day of the year. The sun shot through the ice-frosted windshield, blinding me against my destination. I pulled over and blasted the defroster, a hurricane of sound shattering the silence. Sight restored, I started off again, only to be held against my will at a traffic…
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Well, race day is here and I can finally stop obsessing about this. For at least ten days I’ve watched cold trade with rain for which element would cause the most pain at today’s Manchester Road Race. Last week we were looking at a dry low thirties and I commented, That’s better than a wet…
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The song stirred an intuition in me, nothing I could articulate but no less fixed and definite. Pride. My country was special. I felt blessed to be part of a country that inspired hope in people from all over.
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Keeping Fred at home allows him to decompress from the unnerving stimuli that accost the average earthling when this author forces them out the front door to shop for a couch or silence the leaf blower guy or have his oil changed.
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The extra hour fed the hungry, organized life, deepened my gloom over the state of our democracy, and gave our feathered friends an edge over squirrels ahead of winter.
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Something tells me we’re all going to need to keep a sense of humor in the days and weeks ahead.
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Right now, as I type upon my keyboard, my consciousness is giving voice to Voyager.
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I headed down off the knoll and onto the course, tracking my son’s progress along fields of long-buried soldiers and lost, dud ordnance, gamely chasing a PR in the glory of his youth.
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We stopped for breakfast on a rock beside a rope swing, musing aloud about swingers throwing themselves from such a height into the water.
Ben East Books 