Quote

I think I'm still chewing on my years as a foreign correspondent. I found myself covering catastrophes - war, uprising, famine, refugee crises - and witnessing how people were affected by dire situations. When I find a story from the past, I bring some of those lessons to bear on the narrative.

I would say as a journalist, I would envision travelling to other countries that have had to reckon with their past and see how they've done it: what worked, what didn't work, finding characters that would tell the story of how that process was done.

I'm not a historian. I'm a politician. What is important for us is that the countries of the region and the people grow closer to each other, and that they are able to prevent aggression and injustice.

Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.

The one challenge you have when you're going back into history is that people, unlike with today's news - we think we know what's happened already - we think that it's history and therefore less interesting.

It's very important to always put things in their historical contexts. It teaches important lessons about the country in question.

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

Knowledge about the economy, ideas about capitalism and government, the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.

Believe me, as one who has seen a number of international crises firsthand, they cannot be handled without an understanding of history.

History is another country and might be full of fascinating incidents and places to go visit - but as a destination for emigration, it has some problems!