Words can grind bones into dust and words can build castles in the sky. Words can give birth to nations. Of those who understood this force we find the lettered revolutionary Alexander Hamilton, principal author of the foundational Federalist Papers and among the founding fathers of the United States of…

The flight in over Algeria treats you to a view of green-clad mountains meeting the sea. Settlements of the city of Algiers, and its suburbs, will then enter your view. Finished buildings in white mix with unfinished clay-coloured brick outlines as the city comes into clearer focus. …

This is a short review on ‘Identity — the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment a book by Francis Fukuyama’. Fukuyama introduces us to isothymia, signifying a sense of inner dignity, a refusal to be put down, and to megalothymia in a sense a desire to go beyond…

Book review: Meditations is a compelling insight into the mind and age of a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. True to its name, Meditations to a large extent takes the shape of an inner dialogue with questions and answers, admonishments, encouragement to himself. Of note is that he writes much of…

Dear future Emir, We must sometimes stop and reflect upon our experiences, and draw due lessons from those reflections, lest we be drawn into journals, charts, medication, indications, and forget to stop and see where we are. This is my reflection over these last years, a short letter to you. …

(This has been written in a low-energy state, please judge my writing on my other piece on Fukuyama) I decided quite hastily to take a trip to Greece. Why Greece? Well, why not. Alas, I landed on the 13th(?) of June in a sunny Greece. From the airplane I must…

“They say the RND [Algerian political party] was the only baby born with a mustache” “What do you mean, uncle?” “They were born one day, and controlled parliament the next” A reading of Francis Fukuyama’s two-volume series, and the reform of the Algerian state Many a review of Fukuyama’s works start by mentioning the controversy of his book The End Of History and The…