The relationship between disaster and revolution has seldom been explored, though it crops up throughout the history of revolutions. Catastrophic weather across France in the summer of 1788 brought on the crop failures and bad harvests that led to the rising bread prices, shortages, and hunger that played a major role in triggering the French ( Read more... )

Being raised by a bibliophibian from a family of teachers and a recording engineer/radio DJ, books and music were ubiquitous in my household. I became an adult around the time that the Internet was hitting its stride as an endless repository of digital media, but I've still got an emotional attachment to physical media and the "save everything" ( Read more... )

Major Reid Sawyer is a leading American authority on Al Qaeda. He is based at the United States Military Academy at West Point and wrote the textbook on counter terrorism methods. On the eve of a major new World Service series about Al Qaeda, Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Major Sawyer about who is winning the war on terror. And gets some surprising ( Read more... )