GCAW's writings

Nothing here

2008-08-07T15:41:00.001-04:00

There's nothing on this site, because it's all here.

"Saddam good, or Saddam bad?"

2008-04-12T10:59:00.002-04:00

I wrote about my first trip to Iraq in 02138. Here's more on it.

Careful-what-you-wish-for department

2008-04-12T10:58:00.002-04:00

My story about Paraguay's Mennonites, here.

Nueva Germania

2008-03-19T00:06:00.001-04:00

The Walrus includes this piece on the status of Nueva Germania, the Nietzschean colony in Paraguay.

Media appearances

2008-03-18T23:59:00.002-04:00

My Atlantic piece about the future of Havana attracted the attention of radio shows, including these, on which I've appeared in the last month:

WHBC
WSRQ
KOA
WMIJ
WLIU
KWRE

No relation

2008-03-18T23:54:00.002-04:00

The San Francisco Chronicle's Saturday edition has my review of Gordon S. Wood's latest collection of essays.

GOOD piece

2008-02-25T15:01:00.002-05:00

Mentioned here, now posted here. Do my teeth really look like that? Smaller in real life, I think, but also yellower.

Exit Castro

2008-02-19T14:34:00.003-05:00

In the April Atlantic, a graphical musing on what Havana might look like, in a post-Castro situation. The illustration is by Chris Philpot.

GCAesop's fables

2008-02-15T16:16:00.002-05:00

The March/April Mental Floss has two articles by me, on an Aesop theme.

The mayhem beat

2008-02-13T09:59:00.002-05:00

Continuing a streak of reviewing only books about carnage and destruction, I have my take on Randal Collins's Violence: A Microsociological Theory here, in the New York Sun.

Mengele in Paraguay

2008-02-05T15:02:00.000-05:00

Today in The Smart Set, a travel piece on the trail of Josef Mengele in Paraguay.

The Mayan Protocol

2008-01-29T19:00:00.000-05:00

GOOD magazine's current issue includes my argument for permitting condemned criminals to donate their organs after execution -- or indeed, as a method of execution. Jack Kevorkian wrote about this years ago in Prescription: Medicide, a fascinating read regardless of your feelings about assisted suicide or the sinister old man who is its most famous champion.

Space didn't permit me to write about one major problem for prisoner donation: communicable diseases. American prisons are filthy, and along with many other indignities, the inmates face tremendous risk of contracting hepatitis and other unpleasant bugs. Even outside of prison, it's tough to find a donor match. Barely one out of a hundred corpses qualifies as a donor in the free world; in prisons the population's bodies would be considerably worse. (To get a dead donor in the US, you have to find someone whose body is in great shape, but who has suffered a recent, catastrophic head wound.)

This low rate of donor fitness means the question of organ donation is largely moot. But the question of how we treat our criminals deserves more attention, and is of course the real subject of my argument.

I'll post an update with a link when GOOD runs the piece online.

The Word from Qandil

2007-12-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

Months ago, the Oracle of Jane's predicted Turkish air strikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq. And lo, they have come to pass, not for the first time this year.

A source in the mountains, a young man who has spent years with the PKK, wrote to me just before the attacks. He was weary of seeing time slip past, his youth drained away, and Kurdish statehood thwarted again and again. He predicted death, and even welcomed it (in what Anthony Burgess might have called an apothanein-theloish way):

Hi my dear friend
the situiation is very sensitive
now we are reading oureselve for defence because turkish army will come here.this war is very huge and vaittle for us and kurdish nathion. I wish to see you againe but it is possible to be killed .Iam not remorsfull for my martyre because I belive to my aspirathion and fredoom of kurdish nathion.we are right and justfull so we will be winner.death is better than thise knavish life of kurdish nathion. dont forget us and continue your holly jop for humanity and right off opressed people (including kurds).
best wishes

("Viattle" = "vital," I think.)

No word from him since then.

Sinclair Lewis quote

2007-12-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

An update on the provenance of a quote supposedly from Sinclair Lewis.

The Sinclair Lewis Society traced the quote. They forwarded me this message:

In early February of 1948, Sinclair Lewis was quoted in the Gazette and Daily, a York, Pennsylvania, periodical, as saying, "When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism ... "

Nothing about a cross.

A site called "Everything Shii Knows" provides a New York Times article from 1938, reproduced here, which credits the Huey Long version to Prof. Halford E. Luccock of Yale Divinity School.

Naples's Honored Society

2007-12-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

Check out the Web site of The American for a review of Roberto Saviano's investigation of the Camorra.

Lost in Transliteration

2007-11-26T12:44:00.001-05:00

TheAtlantic.com is running my explanation of our Arabic transliteration policy.

Libre Mente Tuya

2007-11-24T12:53:00.000-05:00

The inimitable Benjamín Fernández Bogado interviewed me this morning about Iraq, American politics, and the history of The Atlantic Monthly on Radio Libre, 1200AM in Asunción, Paraguay.

A letter

2007-11-21T18:56:00.000-05:00

That was quick. The London Review of Books published a letter I wrote just last week about Nicholas Guyatt's piece on the Christian right.

In the letter I did not mention one other minor error. Following the lead of a number of Web sites and T-shirt manufacturers, Guyatt attributes this cute line to Sinclair Lewis:

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

I cannot be sure, but I don't think Lewis ever wrote this. It's not in It Can't Happen Here, which is where most place it.

There are two similar-sounding quotes from the same era. In the Teachers College Record, J. A. Gengerelli wrote in 1939:

When fascism comes to America it will wear the knee-breeches of the Spirit of 1776.

And no later than 1940, Time magazine was attributing to Huey Long:

When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism.

(Long, incidentally, is a venerated figure here in Paraguay. Another local hero: Rutherford B. Hayes, who has a whole province named after him.)

Of these three versions, the faux-Lewis is most boring, the Gengerelli most vivid, and the Long not only smartest but also most pertinent.

Whole Hog

2007-11-16T14:36:00.000-05:00

Spotted at Reagan Airport: the current issue of Mental Floss is running my spread about parts of pigs humans can get installed in their bodies.

More on the Kurds

2007-11-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

Last month I had an Atlantic Online piece about my trip to visit the PKK guerillas in Qandil, Iraq. This month's Jane's Intelligence Review features an analysis (subscription req.) of the upcoming vote in Kirkuk.

Sunny Abkhazia

2007-11-13T13:59:00.000-05:00

The Smart Set just published a dispatch from Abkhazia.

Review of Amy Chua's latest

2007-11-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

I reviewed Amy Chua's Day of Empire for the New York Sun.

The Bob Grant Show

2007-11-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

Bob Grant of WABC had me on last Thursday to talk about hurricane modification. As the owner of property in Florida, he's all in favor of it.

What Happens Here

2007-11-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

I'll post occasionally to record where my writing has appeared. Another site will keep archived articles.