Tag: history

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People who stood up to Elon Musk’s mission 

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Michael Lewis drills into the early days of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, as told by public servants it targeted and one of America’s best storytellers. In the new Washington, it was the worst thing you could be- especially if you worked in the federal government and wanted to keep your job. A Blocker was a holdover, an impediment someone who didn’t get the message- and most of all, someone who didn’t belong. Blockers is the story of people who believed they had a calling, who are convinced they were doing something the country could not do without, and then … Continue reading People who stood up to Elon Musk’s mission 

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Billionaires secretive networks

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A seat inside The Global Family Office Community (GFOC), one of the most discreet and secretive networks in the world, where community of families that control fortunes worth billions of pounds is effectively a floating private members’ Clun for the world’s  wealthiest families meeting around the world at  private dinners, retreats, seminars and conferences. Over 2, 500 families are now members of this elite exclusive club. They are not chasing the next big deal, but advice, perspective and this is one place they discuss the problems money cannot solve, “No one is pitching anything at them, it’s a safe place where they can come … Continue reading Billionaires secretive networks

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Bravery of captain and passengers saved 174 lives

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Dubai-Tel Aviv flight Flydubai FZ1073 plunged more than 16,000 feet just over 30 seconds during its steepest descent.  Omani co-pilot Hamam Al-Hamami, who tried to crash the Flydubai flight to Israel by stabbing Indian pilot Smit Machchar (39), flight captain inside the cockpit savage attack freed after passengers and crew intervened and a reserve pilot landed the aircraft safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. It has been reported the co-pilot was already been banned from flying by Oman over concerns about radical ideological views, despite joining Flydubai.  Captain Smit Machchhar was seriously injured after multiple stab wound, realised he was not only fighting … Continue reading Bravery of captain and passengers saved 174 lives

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Intertwined lives of those who experienced age of extremes

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In The City Without Jews, award-winning historian Douglas Smith,  explains what Viennese meant stepping beyond the limits of one’s identity into a cosmopolitan world of Kultur, where race and religion could be hidden behind a veil of refinement and achievement. Vienna was once a city in which Jews did not have to be Jews, and singular story of the destruction of Jewish Vienna as seen through the letters and diaries of an extraordinary woman who witnessed it all. In 1922, Hugo Bettauer published the novel The City Without Jews, a satirical critique of Austrian antisemitism. Three years later he would be … Continue reading Intertwined lives of those who experienced age of extremes

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Legitimacy was borrowed from a future time…

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Francis Fukuyama, a leading public intellectual, for the first time, charts his political and intellectual evolution across fiv3e transformative decades. We follow him from the circle of students around the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom at Cornell, into the halls of power in Washington and at the RAND Corporation, and into private conversations with world leaders from Muammar Qaddhafi to China’s powerful elite. Fukuyama touches on his family’s story, including his relatives’ internment during World War II along with other Japanese Americans. And, in surprisingly personal terms, he reflects on the experiences that led him to reevaluate his own thinking, most … Continue reading Legitimacy was borrowed from a future time…

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Cohn’s feistiness, surly defiance and charm of a rogue lawyer

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Roy Cohen is a super-lawyer and political fixed, whose shocking exploits over four decades have shaped the modern political era, most prominently the ascent of Donald Trump. In October 1973, Donald Trump was an ambitious 27-year-old from Queens trying to push his way into the world of Manhattan real estate. He met Roy Cohn, the notorious New York lawyer whose clients included mobsters and celebrities, one evening at the members-only Le Club Restaurant. Trump and his developer father had just been sued by the US government for discriminating against Black people seeking apartments in their properties. Trump asked Cohn “What … Continue reading Cohn’s feistiness, surly defiance and charm of a rogue lawyer

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New Dawn: Imperial wreckage, war’s chaos, and suffering supercharged anti-colonial movements

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Sinologist at the University of Cambridge, Hans van de Ven, in Blood Dawn, complains while Western histories of the second World War, focuses on the events in Europe, the US and the Russia, Asia remains “insufficiently examined, inadequately narrated, and rarely remembered in public discourse”.  In Blood Dawn, he offers a vital corrective restoring the Asian war to its proper place, and tracing the destruction of empires and the emergence of the nation-state in Asia. van de Ven tells the Asian story deftly, including the depression which helped finish off the parliamentary experiment of Taisho democracy in Japan, empowering soldiers for … Continue reading New Dawn: Imperial wreckage, war’s chaos, and suffering supercharged anti-colonial movements

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Diana: My Sister….

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In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, a memoir by Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer  about his sister Lady Diana Spencer. Diana became the Princess of Wales when she married Charles III, then heir to the British throne. The book published by Michael Joseph an imprint of Penguin Random House, and released simultaneously in the United States and Canada ahead of the 30th death anniversary of Diana in August 2027 and translated into 12 languages. The memoir chronicles their childhood including their upbringing at the Spencer family estate, their parent’s divorce. It examines Diana’s marriage to Charles, her rise to global prominence, her humanitarian … Continue reading Diana: My Sister….

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Engage with the place to tend and to mend

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Amid women facing backlashes across the world, growing dangers for women, as their safety is being threatened and their freedoms are under attack, with authoritarian states, online misogyny and climate breakdown, wildfires burning in Europe and drought ravages harvests and apocalyptic summer of 2026. Academic and activist author Natasha Walter after decades of her advocacy work alongside refugee women: “When heat rises, so does male violence. The ecological crisis is amplifying every threat to women. Women’s bodies and the body of the earth in danger at one on the same time.” She wrote, The New Feminism ( 1998), an upbeat, … Continue reading Engage with the place to tend and to mend

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Legacy of a Mughal ruler

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Controversial Aurangzeb “Alamgir, last of the “Great Mughals”, whose empire touched Kabul on one side and Arakan on the other, was described by British Imperialists as “Crooked and Cruel, Dark and Devious”. The Raj-era historian Jadunath Sarkar described him as a bigotd despot who precipitated the “decay of Indian civilization”.  Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 left a divided legacy. India’s current Hindu nationalist government wants to send a bulldozer and raze his grave. His dynasty survived, in one form or another, until the British laid waste to its capital at Delhi in 1857, which lives on the political consciousness of over billion … Continue reading Legacy of a Mughal ruler