Ben East Books

Tag: Travel

  • Transit Post—Frankfurt

    Transit Post—Frankfurt

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    Ben East
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    Just so I have a post from Germany. We have a decent layover in Frankfurt, and although it’s zero three hundred at my point of origin—hence the cobwebs in my head—it’s 9:35 here and past noon at our final destination. Normal workaday hours to write and post! Marginally related to all this, I’ve been tracking…

  • Posting from a New Home

    Posting from a New Home

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    Ben East
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    After five years posting from DC, BenEastBooks moves on to Mumbai. Expect the same focus on craft and reviewing serious books by independent authors. Expect new writing invigorated by travel and adventure. Expect postings flavored with the exotic, the ancient, the extraordinary, and the very new. I welcome contributions, requests for reviews, and sensible observations. When…

  • Maximum City

    Maximum City

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    Ben East
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    We are neither here nor there. The carpets are up and the curios down. The boys are packed and shipped off south for a week with Naniji. A week from tomorrow the packers arrive. They’ll invade for 3 or 4 days to box up several categories of shipment: 700 lbs of air freight; 7k lbs…

  • Fly America… Call the Philippines

    Fly America… Call the Philippines

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    Ben East
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    When your official government travel orders authorize advanced seating to guarantee a seat beside your child during an international move—old home packed, new home empty… …but the airline won’t confirm your seat more than 23 hours before you fly… …and you spend hours on the phone… …talking to the travel agent… …and talking to the…

  • Literature Only

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    Ben East
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    Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea makes for great reading on a flight home after a trip to Key West. During this vacation Ben East introduced the novel to his oldest son and snorkeled with a shark with his youngest.

  • D. W. Hitman

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    Ben East
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    Warning: the reading police, disguised as the media, have infiltrated the State Department. Based on a stroll through the Harry Truman building cafeteria, one journalist for The Atlantic pretends to understand our present condition: “As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle.” Forgive me for…

  • Street Food with Lou Stoole

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    Ben East
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    I don’t watch Anthony Bourdain’s television programs but I understand the attraction behind them. Here’s a guy traveling the world to sample bizarre cuisine, satisfying the viewer’s appetite for the exotic and the edible. His narrative is wry, crisp, and authoritative. His locations distant to the point of being surreal. His choices of food—practically supernatural. But what happens when…

  • A Catch-22 for Diplomacy

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    Ben East
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    Two Pumps for the Body Man Set in Saudi Arabia, Two Pumps does for American diplomacy and the War on Terror what Catch-22 did for military logic during the Second World War: The enemy can’t kill us if our institutions kill us first. Jeff Mutton walks the diplomatic beat protecting American officials in Saudi Arabia.…