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
-
Remembering those we lost. Remembering those who survived. Remembering this awful day and its protracted aftermath. It’s the aftermath that sticks most. The long period that stretched through weeks when our broken mission pulled itself together again. We pulled ourselves up from piles of ash and dust; from the pulverized concrete and glass shattered by bullets fired…
-
The Books & News blog finds itself in good company, listed among many others at the American Foreign Service Association’s round up of Foreign Service Blogs. They got me looking around at the work being posted by other diplomats and colleagues overseas. Here’s a summary of the first few. Address: TBD Recounts the early steps in the foreign service…
-
Cheap.
-
The six year old appears bedside in the dark, wants to know if he can go downstairs and write. “I’ll get up and write with you.” He’s written a war story called The Attack of the Red Army. It’s three chapters long. In chapter one Sam and Jacob are enjoying the last bit of summer…
-
Thanksgiving. The most American day of the year. More American, perhaps, than the Fourth of July. Throw in a hyperbolically American venue—Texas stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys—and you’ve got Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (also now in theaters). For the heroes of Bravo squad, barnstorming the U.S. on a brief victory tour to rile up…
-
Top 10 list requiring no preface or introduction— 10. Bubba. She enabled him. He enabled her. Until they didn’t. 9. BO. The Affordable Care Act. Its moral necessity was lost on the selfish many. 8. Vlad. Great spook. Spooky guy. Data thief. Exposer of secrets. 7. Gowdy (hair!) & Chaffetz. Drawn out hearings to reveal nothing again…
-
Six months back, guy walks into the library. Hands over his Foreign Service novel. “Here ya go.” “What’s this?” “It’s a book. Go ahead. Put it on the shelf.” “Not so fast, sonny. Two Pumps for the Body Man? Sounds dirty.” “You don’t want this novel for your patrons?” “We want four copies of that novel…
-
My nominations for The Stephen T. Colbert Award for The Literary Excellence continue. Boy, this effort is really lifting my mood! In Preston Lang’s The Sin Tax a female baddy flashes her gun at a male ex-con baddy: “You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get a carry permit in New York. It’s insane. But once…
-
My nominations for The Stephen T. Colbert Award for The Literary Excellence continue. Writers, friends, and fellow bureaucrats looking for the most eloquent way to describe their mood this past week should look no further than Sterling Johnson’s masterpiece of contemporary literature: English as a Second F*cking Language. This gem, in the shape of Strunk & White’s classic treatise…
-
Seriously, wake up America. These are the times you live in now. “Heroes, by buying and reading this book, you’ve proven you get it–and are therefore now members of the nominating committee for The Stephen T. Colbert Award for The Literary Excellence.” Use the medallions below to nominate any book that you feel embodies the values of…
Ben East Books 