Word: booking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...infidels" - this is not a holy war but a rebellion driven by homegrown historical and political grievances. McCargo rightly scorns the legions of post-9/11 armchair analysts who try to shoehorn every conflict into well-Googled theories of global jihad. No armchairs for this author: he researched the book by crisscrossing southern Thailand in a temperamental 1989 Mercedes, hastening back to the town of Pattani by nightfall to avoid militant booby traps. McCargo is the real McCoy...
...southernmost provinces. The problem is that, for the rest of this intensely nationalistic country, autonomy is regarded as a back door for separatism, a word whose closest Thai equivalent translates emotively as "tearing apart the land." Such sensitivities make public discussion of bold solutions impossible, laments McCargo. As his book suggests, putting the land back together isn't impossible. Tragically, it isn't imminent either...
...first paintings, bright colors were used for effect, not naturalism - trees could be red, hills and horses blue. Pure color would become the central focus of his best works, a focus he pondered in his 1911 manifesto of abstraction, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Art, he wrote in the book, comes from within, from "inner necessity," and colors and shapes speak to people just as musical sounds do: "Color is a power which directly influences the soul." Contemporary Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky had preached that a new, spiritual age was about to dawn, and Kandinsky was convinced...
...this time, Kandinsky was on his own, artistically. The train of followers that he predicted in his book failed to materialise. And that new age he had been so sure of never did dawn. But after his death in 1944, his spirit lived on in the postwar design explosion that sprayed color onto a grey and battered world. And today, his work perfectly illustrates progress toward an ideal - a rarity in a world consumed with art for art's sake...
...rich countries, democracy makes life more peaceful and prosperous; in poor ones, it makes life more dangerous. So argues Oxford economist Paul Collier in his bold new book Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, which extends the discussion he began in his celebrated 2007 study of the world's poorest nations, The Bottom Billion. Collier's not the first to point out that elections, unsupported by robust institutions, are simply political fetishes. But his analysis, delivered with clarity and wit, digs deep into how they increase the risk of wars, uprisings and riots for the world's poorest...