Sitemap - 2021 - This Week, Those Books

This Christmas we managed to frighten ourselves into deep gloom

A grim Christmas for the Soviet Union, 30 years ago

The case for China's continued rise

Along with other things, America has a Santa crisis

The new Internationale and the new kids on the left bloc

How Erdogan's faux-religious economic scruples matter to Nutella-lovers

Chile’s election aftermath ironically speaks volumes about America

The Orient Express doesn't have much to do with the orient anymore

The Refugee Convention is dead: let's bury it and start again

2022 economic forecasts? A parlor game

The too meta world of the Metaverse

Dave Eggers' Dickensian take on the perils of Big Tech getting bigger

What chance that cigarettes go up in smoke?

A moral vacuum…on either side of the English Channel?

30 years…and counting of 'They're trying to cancel Christmas'

Starbucks froths up the debate over work and pay inequality

The New Zealand nudge that Big Tobacco must view with dread

Counting down on exactly two years of Covid 19

Biden should have called Trump out as Covid's Typhoid Mary

Diagnosing some of Germany's angst

Where in the modern world is waste being repurposed to build?

Linguistic code is a necessary oil

America's Talibanisation on abortion may go beyond the Taliban

Journalists are comically attached to linear narratives

Nah, Donald Trump probably won't be back in the White House. Here's why

The woman who led Barbados in its brave leap forward

How a US kidnapping gave hope in the global fight against domestic violence

A dam can be a good cover model and infrastructure, a good story

A manifesto for 'third-way', eyes-wide-shut liberalism

Iman's tribute to David Bowie is a fragrant ode to their life together

It's the 400th anniversary of Thanksgiving, which was nothing like this anyway

Britain is seeking an 'Australian solution' to the migrant problem

The Rittenhouse trial was basically about gun rights and self-defence

Tariq Ali's views on 'racism' in English cricket are worth reading

The elephant in the courtroom isn't Happy

A French president who's made for TV?

85 minutes as president. Kamala Harris' place in history

The dictator returns - through his spawn

'French beserk': The Eric Zemmour effect

The (re)making of China…in Mr Xi's image

America's Democrats can't risk another 'basket of deplorables' moment

Belarus is weaponizing human beings. For years, Europe has done the same, in reverse

The world needs more Ithacas

What's nude for your skin colour?

Britain is not a captured state…yet

How to shop without costing the Earth

The age of protest: 'a great wind is blowing'

China tightens its belt - literally

Trump-lite is flavour of the month

Plants are a 'thing'

A baby is sold in Herat. A man sold his family in Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex

How to make COP26 a success? Talk about plastics

What does the Virginia election matter when the American establishment itself is rotten?

The French Trump?

Abdulrazak Gurnah: the truth-teller’s tale

Halloween has become spookily big in Britain

Mon dieu. The French have given up on the skinny jean

Meta problems: Beyond Facebook

The 'next climate summit'

Virtue, as the Taliban see it

Asma Khan epitomises the rise and rise of Britain's public chef

'The world's most effective democratically elected leader today'?

Did Gurnah win the literature Nobel for his prose or politics?

How to solve the sunchokes or Jerusalem 'fartichokes' issue

Governments should mark World Food Day every day

The mystery of the mutinous workers

Abdulrazak Gurnah makes little concession to literary fads

What Hungary does today, America does tomorrow?

Problems with supply chains aren't exactly enthusing the anti-globalisation brigade

Workers of the world are uniting - we're seeing it happen

Virginia's Youngkin and the Republicans who are 'strangers in their own party'

Did democracy in Tunisia fail or did it never succeed?

Columbus Day is hit by a great rethink and the 'everything shortage'

CSA for Brexit Britain?

The highs and lows of hotel art

#FairPlay: About 'taking the knee' before it became a powerful symbol

A crime wave in America?

'Wrongthink' and other issues at liberal institutions

A colour revolution…or not, in Virginia

Multi-coloured 'porcelain' berries and cycle lane sharing

The 'Indiana banana' and its close Indian relative

Vignettes from the DMV area - DC, Maryland, Virginia

The 'cloud car' of Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C.

'Slow streets' need to be the way we live, a lot faster

Afghanistan's embassy in Washington, D.C. is like a metaphor for the country

Washington, D.C.'s new signs

Mary MacBride finishes off a perfect fall evening in Washington, D.C.

Sabina Nessa and the 'missing white woman syndrome'

Upholding democracy…one class at a time

The Kama Sutra and the Bajrang Dal

As the West cuts aid lifelines, Afghanistan's real crisis looms

A Russian exercise in re-selection

The Nicki Minaj balls-up

What's with the Gallic ire?

Two accounts from rural Afghanistan paint a picture of sudden, unaccustomed peace

The California story

Despite all the international attention, Afghan refugees are not welcome

Brexit and 'British' success at the US Open

The original 'Roe baby'

Inside the Afghan resettlement process in London

Heard about the £5,000 handbags

The Republican Party has serious life and death issues

A Brexit Christmas?

Afghanistan: 'There is a lot of noise'

3 different takes on democracy: America, Afghanistan, Venezuela

Haiti chérie: not unlucky but unprepared

The Afghan situation comes home to Greenwich

Are the Taliban really in charge?

A slice of 17th century life in the National Gallery

What to read about jihad

Donald Rumsfeld's epitaph was written long ago 

What Hissene Habre's death in prison says

A better playbook for America's Afghan engagment?

'The trendy Taliban'? You've got to be kidding

Where ARE the anti-war voices?

Listen up, to these hard truths on Afghanistan

What's at stake for Afghan women?

Keeping up appearances…in Afghanistan

Three takeaways from the Taliban's return to Kabul

There is just enough to yoke Afghanistan and Haiti together

Peace vs Justice

Zambia once heralded the 'African Spring'

The bizarre nature of Afghan 'peace'

20 years on from 9/11

Biden Vs Bernie…again, in a different vein

Online gaming is both 'opium' and Mahjong

Orban's Hungary is now guru to the American right

Progressivism Vs Democracy

Are you wondering what on earth is going on in Afghanistan?

Belarus is an example of the impotence of the 'West'

Does China have the stomach to become a superpower?

Britain unlocks itself to the footloose

A warm, dry July evening in the heart of London: here's what it looks like

Shakespeare in the Garden: as you like it

What's wrong with Paul Bowles? What's wrong with us?

Why the livestock farmer is the world's next guru

Half-a-year in, what about Joe-plomacy?

Space: the final frontier for the planet's wealthiest?

The Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention is so yesterday

What Haiti could learn from the success story of Bangladesh

There's a whole bookshelf of new books on cities

The pandemic was a force of nature. Britain's pingdemic is a farce of human nature

Inside the most cursed country in the world: Haiti

Europe promises 'Fit for 55'

Haiti doesn't need the world to be hands-off

Digital money won't be the cash in your pocket

James Carville on 'wokeness' and the Democrats' 'messaging problem'

What's happening in Haiti?

'When you win, you're English; when you lose, you're Black'

Whether or not football's coming home, there's a limit to sport's transformative power

'Maybe, just maybe_ Good luck England!' Football and the art of understatement

The assassination of Haiti's president may worsen its response to COVID-19

The ABC of the assassination of Haiti's president

How did Bangladesh become the 'miracle on the Meghna'?

How Canada became 'warmer than Dubai'

That's rich. 56.1 million millionaires…and counting

Never give the European far right an inch; half-an-inch is all it can manage

From 1979, this man kept tabs on the EU's worsening verbal diarrhoea

Do Norway's big bucks give it a right of sorts on Gabon's forests?

America is no South Africa, that's for sure

Democracies Anonymous, a new mutual aid fellowship?

Matt Hancock, Gina Coladangelo and the Oliver Bonas beanie from the station shop

How much is enough to feel wealthy?

Look at Miami and see our collective future?

Twitter and Facebook can't be an ad hoc international court

The most generous person in the world

What's the point of the Nobel Peace Prize now?

How European bonds are helping the pandemic recovery

British politics' soap opera script

4 reasons to believe America may be in better political shape than we think

Can the 'Cornwall consensus' last?

From Jackson Browne to chants of 'fake news'

Mr Biden is right that America is back. For how long is the question

A 'Boris bike' and a Wikiphoto

The Israeli Arab dentist drilling down to the basics of what it means to be human

Boris and that 'special relationship'

The Churchill Factor

Barbary wars V 2.0?

Boris Johnson and that honeymoon

A constitution for Mars?

How will we live together?

Yasser Arafat is arrested in India for pro-Palestinian FB post

Is Lithuania the new Sweden?

May was glorious  —  for impunity

Biden and the myth of the political Yoda

Truckers, bankers and others are Brexit-ing

Making an honest man of Boris Johnson

Big Oil has a big problem

In three countries, the war over tax

Vaccine justice?

'North Korea in the heart of Europe'?

Swexit isn't a word but it should be

One day we'll all be 'prosumers'

Eco-modernism vs traditional environmentalism

How one woman changed the world

The decline and fall of the Roman empire was a spur…to progress

Trump's Accords were anything but

What's a cautious hug?

I wouldn't want to be a white male writer right now

The Nakba continues to unfold

Brexit's rearview window is fogged up by Newspeak

Is the #WFH era ending?

'Women should try to take up more space'

Brexit has been a throwback to an earlier age

'No means yes'

America's climate story is one of dizzying change

The Brothers of Italy are led by a sister, but their politics is still the same

The pandemic and the clothes on our backs

Look who's leading the digital currency line-up

Ted Cruz tells it like it is

The gravest miscarriage of justice in British history

For three days, south London became Berlin

The constant gardener

Bidenomics in real terms

How to become a less globalised business 

India's Covid crisis and America's vaccine gold mine

The four foreign policy 'tribes' of Britain

Much ado about the Bard’s birth-day

You can't pandemic-proof a pilgrimage

Punctuation marks in George Floyd Square

E-commerce is the new mail order

What links the late Idriss Deby's Chad to Egypt and India

Bystander trauma: A tale of two countries

Northern Ireland new troubles are criminal, not political

Imagining London a hundred years on

The election that inspired hope

Lobbying and cronyism in Britain

American workers are like moths to Amazon's flame

Biden builds a new idea of infrastructure

Reflections after a year as a volunteer in pandemic-hit Britain…

'A rude old man from a bygone age?'

AI, the tank and the 'blitzkrieg' concept

Mitch McConnell and corporate America’s First Amendment rights

Ankara chairs and the business of 'protocol machismo'

The international order itself is racially structured

America's bad news bias is a feature not a bug

Would diversity and the British royal family mean more Plantagenets?

Joe Biden’s plan to build…hope

The journalist who wasn’t and other stories

An Anglo-American Indian view of the world

The journalist who wasn’t and other stories

Joe Biden’s plan to build…hope

Legislative thuggery in Georgia?

This ‘Suez crisis’ could be an opportunity

How can the media cover the future when it’s not happened yet?

Is Europe course-correcting after taking a hard-right turn?

A glorious week for Britain? Depends on who you ask

A bright green hug in a mug

It’s time for the world to discuss the very concept of asylum and refuge all over again

Words have long been a weapon against Asian Americans