Gary Singh

When Doha and Dubai Were Part of India The Forgotten Ties Between the Subcontinent and the Gulf

Can't wait for this book ...
open.substack.com/pub/travelso...

War on America, Chicago Theater of Operations In counter-insurgency warfare, any civilian can be a suspect

Excellent analysis, as usual.
open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

Twelve Steps to National Collapse: A Blueprint for How Democracies Die A historian’s alarm: when these twelve familiar steps appear in a nation, the result is often irreversible—unless citizens rise up and demand otherwise…

An accurate summary, as usual.

Twelve Steps to National Collapse: A Blueprint for How Democracies Die
hartmannreport.com/p/twelve-ste...

Jeff Greenwald On Circumnavigating the Globe Without Ever Flying Jeff Greenwald, author of the brilliant travel memoir "The Size of the World: Once Around Without Ever Leaving the Ground" was today's guest.In the course of the conversation, he discussed:-What the i...

Proud to call both of these folks friends. Have a listen.

I'm listening to The Frommer's Travel Show | Jeff Greenwald On Circumnavigating the Globe Without Ever Flying on Podbean, check it out! www.podbean.com/ea/dir-2jiwe...

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 Every year, the American Library Association compiles a list of the Top 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books based on reports from the field and media coverage.

Banned Books Week is coming up.

www.ala.org/bbooks/frequ...

Committee for the First Amendment

“We draw inspiration from the original Committee for the First Amendment, when artists like Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Henry Fonda stood together against attacks on the First Amendment...”
www.committeeforthefirstamendment.com/home

The latest. 👇

Football & Control: The Battle Between Capital, Community and Culture From sovereign wealth funds to fan protests, ownership is the defining tension shaping football’s future identity.

"The sport is now an ecosystem where sovereign wealth funds pursue geopolitical leverage, private equity groups chase returns, and billionaires convert status into influence, while fans and regulators fight to protect identity."
open.substack.com/pub/original...

Poetics of Fighting Jeff Chang’s new biography, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, explores the internal and external conflicts of the influential martial artist.

Jeff's new epic biography of Bruce Lee publishes TODAY. I wrote about it for Alta. We could have carried on all day.
www.altaonline.com/books/nonfic...

From Nazi Germany to Trump’s America: why strongmen rely on women at home Fascist regimes pushed narratives of domestic bliss, yet relied on women’s unpaid labor. In the US today, ‘womanosphere’ influencers promote the same fantasies

“Life on the patriarchal homestead may not turn out as rosy as advertised.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

To Kash a Troll FBI Director Kash Patel went to Capitol Hill this week to do battle with Democrats. Here are my takeaways.

“Never fight a troll under his bridge.”
open.substack.com/pub/statusku...

👇👇

The biggest factor many are failing to factor in is state capacity.

The Trump regime wants to do all the awful things, and is already causing immense damage, but they’re limited by capacity.

They backed off sending federalized National Guard to occupy Chicago when the governor and mayor said no.

Happy reading!
fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

Robert Redford was the man MAGA men wish they were The late actor believed in American greatness without the culture war baggage

"Trump and his ilk want to Make America Great by recreating an American fiction they were sold via movies and television. The actual movie star wanted to add to America’s greatness by finding what was great about it and doing more of that."
salon-crashcourse.beehiiv.com/p/robert-red...

Robert Redford Dies at 89 The all-American actor and Oscar winner had a second act as a director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival.

A great obituary, if you haven't yet read it.
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...

Correct.

Statement from Post Guild Leadership: The Washington Post Guild condemns the unjust firing of columnist Karen Attiah

Apparently there are some people on here who need a comms 101 lesson that if you DM a journalist to harass them you are not off the record simply because you put it in a DM. Off the record and on the record are agreements between a journalist and a source, not a right anyone has by default. So for anyone else considering DMing me telling me I have it coming or calling me all sorts of slurs, I will make your threats and harassment public here, and yes, your employer will see them. (Also: if you send me a legal threat that is hilariously inept and obviously written by ChatGPT, I will laugh and laugh and laugh, which is probably not your desired effect.)

It is crazy that I just had to put this PSA on LinkedIn. LINKEDIN!

For the record.

My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers.

I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."

Every National Book Award Longlist, 2025 The National Book Awards Longlists are here!

I would rather be posting about books. So here we go.

bookshop.org/lists/every-...

Charlie Kirk and the Value of Empathy Conservatives mock compassion... until they need it.

"Conservatives mock compassion ... until they need it."
open.substack.com/pub/johnpavl...

Kepler's Books in Menlo Park celebrates 70 years this year. I wrote about the 50th anniversary. I wrote about the 60th anniversary. From day one, Roy Kepler built the place with a philosophy of non-violence. Ok, now I am logging off for the day.

Rachel Kushner on the 10th Anniversary of Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band Perhaps it’s the last ten years of conversation I’ve had with the artist herself, ten years of building intimacy in fragments and flows, that inspire me to take Kim’s own words, from the tender and…

"People tend to marinate in their own self-mythology. Kim does not."
lithub.com/rachel-kushn...

The Messianic Madness of Donald J. Trump Messiahs I Have Known (Chapter 2, Verse 1) turns from the cult wars of the 1970s to the culture wars of the 2020s and the only-I-can-save-you president of the United States.

From my old friend Don Lattin, a veteran Bay Area religion reporter back in the day.

open.substack.com/pub/donlatti...

Thread. 👇

“If trauma is infernal, the post-traumatic belongs to Purgatory.”
lareviewofbooks.org/article/dant...

The Ottoman Age of Exploration And the Siege of Gujarat

Another fine piece of work from Sam Dalrymple. Still waiting for the American version of his book, Shattered Lands!

The Ottoman Age of Exploration
open.substack.com/pub/travelso...

RFK Jr., American Psycho He needs to go. Now.

Morning read.

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Willis's Wisdom For a Woebegone World — Mort Report PARIS — Beyond the bullying and buffoonery, Donald Trump is fast reshaping the United States into his own cruel, greed-driven image. Americans have only months left to snap awake and pitchfork their d...

Including quotes from my fellow tea-mystic Phil Cousineau.

www.mortreport.org/reports/we-n...