Ben East Books

Tag: Travel

  • Literature Only

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    by

    Ben East
    in

    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.…