France, Italy, Spain, North Africa, Middle East, terrorism, counterinsurgency, law enforcement, Catholic Church, Anglican Church, pilgrimages, families, tribes, clans and mafias.
Music
Recently, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Marcia Ball; Patsy Cline, Alan Jackson, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Buffett; Peggy Lee, Benny Goodman, Cole Porter, Memphis Minnie, Piaf, Aznavour and Celine Dion, but only in French; Cream, Clapton, Doors, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Guns and Roses, Rolling Stones ("Sympathy for the Devil" and "Spider and the Fly"); Mozart concertos; various old-time Gospel singers ("Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody"; Bob Marley, Shaggy, Jimmy Cliff, UB40, Sean Paul; James Taylor and, yeah, Carly Simon; US Army Ranger running cadences; and the usual Motown greats and Sixties stuff with a recent emphasis on Byrds, Country Joe, and Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction"). And, oh yes, more or less in that vein, Warren Zevon and, never forget, "Political Science" by Randy Newman. And rarely but inevitably, "Duelin' Banjos."
In theaters, anything that makes me think. On DVD, anything that helps me forget. On planes, whatever I wouldn't watch anywhere else.
Television
Nothing very interesting. Watched one season of the Sopranos then stopped. Ditto with Desperate Housewives. Can't get into 24. Enjoy the Daily Show on downloads.
Books
Work stuff. Also, essays by Orwell again and again. Recently, Damon Runyon; Randall Jarrell, Conrad. Poets: Rilke and Yeats repeatedly, even if the passages I committed to memory as a kid and repeat to myself when I can't listen to the outside noise any more are from Housman, Milton, Supervielle, Shakespeare and Coleridge.
Heroes
The first free-association response: my father. For better or worse, but ... for sure. Also, my son. And my sister. And, always, my wife. Outside the family: Charles Thomson, the first and only secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789; Richard F. Burton, reprehensible as he was, led a life of legend, most of which was more vivid than his imagination; Judah P. Benjamin, the only realist in the Confederate cabinet; James Jesus Angleton, the mad genius of triple-think, even if the madness beat him and half-destroyed the Agency in the end.
Boston University
Boston, MA
Graduated: 1974
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Master's Degree
Major: Documentary Film
1972 to 1974
University Of Virginia-Main Campus
Charlottesville, VA
Graduated: 1972
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Interdisciplinary
Clubs: Jefferson Literary and Debating Society
About me: ....
Award-winning author Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for Newsweek Magazine. Previously he worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Central America Bureau Chief. Chris's Shadowland column, about counter-terrorism, espionage and the Middle East, appears weekly on Newsweek Online. For links to recent columns and articles, visit the archive....
Chris's books include With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (Simon & Schuster, 1986); Expats: Travels from Tripoli to Tehran (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990); Innocent Blood: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, 1997), and Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son (Simon & Schuster, 1998). His most recent novel, The Sleeper, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2004. The New York Times called it "a first-rate thriller." The Sleeper is now available directly from Simon and Schuster as an e-book....
He has also written for Foreign Affairs, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Wired, Rolling Stone, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic, among other publications. He is a frequent commentator on CNN, MSNBC and National Public Radio, as well as other television and radio networks....
Chris is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was formerly an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow; of the Overseas Press Club of America; and of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.
Who I'd like to meet: People who can show me the relationship between cause and effect. This sounds like an academic concept, perhaps, but what it means in practice is people on the ground, like those cops, soldiers and intelligence operatives who are constantly up against the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous vagaries of human behavior. Over the last year, I've spent a fair a amount of time with the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement officers elsewhere in the world, and I would always like to meet more.
