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Yo-Yo Ma is offering “Songs of Comfort,” like Johan Sebastian Bach’s Sarabande. Facebook/Yo-Yo Ma.

Of COVID and character

March 21, 2020

Well, where to begin? Should we begin at the beginning — with the overpopulation, poverty, lack of education, filth and communist secrecy that produces diseases like COVID-19 in China? I’m no fan of President Donald J. Trump, but I have no problem with him calling this the Chinese disease, particularly as Chinese President Xi Jinping thinks nothing of kicking American journalists out of China in a further attempt to mask the severity of the virus there and his own negligence in his delayed response and sharing of information. (If Xi is helping the world now with masks and respirators, as Christiane Amanpour of Amanpour & Co. keeps going on about, really, it’s the least he can do, given that his country created the crisis. Praising the Chinese for “helping” is like thanking an arsonist who burned your house down for offering you a place to live. I mean, honestly.

The ruins of the Gates of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran. As the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis was burned to the ground by the conquering Alexander the Great accidentally or as an act of revenge for the destruction of the Acr… — The ruins of the Gates of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran. As the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis was burned to the ground by the conquering Alexander the Great accidentally or as an act of revenge for the destruction of the Acropolis in Athens and/or the mutilation of Greek captives. Now President Donald J. Trump is threatening Iranian cultural sites like this one, which is illegal under international law.

Between Iraq and a hard place

January 7, 2020

So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes’ “Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great” (1796).

Afghanistan and the failure of leadership

December 16, 2019

President Donald J. Trump has announced the withdrawal of 4,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, with the intention of withdrawing all troops by the November election, thus bringing to a close America’s longest war, after 18 years. Or will it?.

A 17th-century Russian manuscript of “The Alexander Romance,” considered one of the earliest novels. Here Alexander explores the depths of the sea.

Trump and the empathy paradox

November 23, 2019

On Nov. 20 — which, as it turned out, would’ve been the 94th birthday of onetime Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan on June 5, 1968 — PBS’ “Nova” aired a fascinating program, “The Violence Paradox” — one that said a lot about the paradox of empathy in our own time.

Based on the controversial work of psychologist Steven Pinker, the program posited that civilization has become increasingly less violent — yes, despite a world in which every Middle Eastern, African and South American country appears to be protesting its corrupt leadership, Hong Kong students are fighting for democracy against China in a classic David-versus-Goliath battle; and school shootings continue unchecked in the United States.

A legend comes to life

November 21, 2019

He was a realist and a romantic, a lover of strong women and beautiful men. And though he was in his day the richest, most powerful man in the world, his most prized possession was a book – Homer’s “The Iliad,” annotated by his tutor, Aristotle.

Most of all, he was as much a myth as a man and a mystery – even to himself.

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 B.C. – a month shy of his 33rd birthday – after conquering and reordering Persia, he left a sprawling empire and a burning question: What drove him?

It’s a question I explore in “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” (Nov. 30, JMS Books), the latest entry in my series “The Games Men Play” and its first historical subject.

Sudden death on D.C.'s power courts

October 24, 2019

A president in thrall to a foreign power. A disenchanted first lady. A White House moving toward crisis.

No, not that White House. But sometimes life imitates art, as it does in Georgette Gouveia’s new psychological thriller, “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books, Oct. 30). It’s a high stakes game of love and death, set on the power courts of Washington, D.C. and other glittering world capitals, that represents a departure for Gouveia, whose previous novels were in the trending category of male/male romance.

Ah, the good old days, when there was at least bipartisan cooperation in investigating intrigue:: President Ronald Reagan receives the Tower Commission Report on his administration’s Iran-Contra scandal from two of the commission’s members — Republi… — Ah, the good old days, when there was at least bipartisan cooperation in investigating intrigue:: President Ronald Reagan receives the Tower Commission Report on his administration’s Iran-Contra scandal from two of the commission’s members — Republican Sen. John Tower (left) and Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie (far right). Courtesy the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.

Impermanent interests: Trump's own Iran contra scandal

September 21, 2019

What did Iran have to do with Nicaragua? Nothing except that the Reagan Administration used the sale of embargoed arms to Iran — yes the very Iran that we now hate — to fund the Contras in their opposition to the communist Nicaraguan government, all behind Congress’ back.

What does Saudi Arabia have to do with Ukraine? Nothing except that the Trump Administration is apparently sending troops to Saudi Arabia to distract from a whistleblower complaint that President Donald J. Trump allegedly withheld aid to Ukraine as he pressured the struggling democracy to investigate rival Joe Biden’s efforts to help son Hunter’s business dealings there. Needless to say, any administration efforts to cooperate with the inevitable congressional hearings won’t be happening.

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