Walking along the street in Iran, if you’re from the Great Satan, is like starring in your own triumphal procession, you attract so much goodwill. We were there last spring and it’s the oddest feeling, nothing...
Back when the Underworld was in its glory days, a lot of people went to visit. Thetis, to dunk baby Achilles into the River Styx and make him invulnerable. Odysseus, to check in with Achilles...
Bushmen have lived in Botswana for at least seventy-five thousand years. They are keepers of the genes, and the ways, and the stories, of those who stayed behind when our ancestors wandered out of Africa...
One weekend Peggy and I were driving along a dirt track in the Central Kgalagadi when we encountered a family of Bushmen, a dozen maybe, carrying bundles and leading a pack horse deeper into the...
Every now and then Bushman who aren’t incarcerated in boarding schools get together and dance for each other. But only every now and then because any event involving Bushmen is difficult to organize. Bushmen don’t take...
If you had to guess which country’s national sport involved teams of horsemen tossing dead goats into cisterns, you might come up with Kyrgyzstan. It’s the centralest of Central Asia Stans, a landlocked former Soviet...
While I was growing up, the Georgia Department of Revenue ran public service announcements warning against untaxed liquor. Alcohol that isn’t taxed isn’t regulated and, if it isn’t regulated, there’s no telling what you might...
On the big World Map in fifth grade, Lesotho looked like nothing so much as a hole in South Africa, as if the bigger country hadn’t entirely formed yet. Which, in a way, it hadn’t....
Despite the murder of the occasional investigative journalist, I’ve always thought Malta sounded like a good place to retire. It’s a sunny, Mediterranean isle that’s just about as close to everywhere in Southern Europe or Northern...
Genesis is a bit vague about where the Garden was located, but being furnished with every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, along with perfect weather and animals that don’t...