Shant Kendarian's visit to Baghdad in 1980 at age seventeen was supposed to be short, just long enough to make peace with his estranged father before returning home to the United States.

In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. Recording his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that “pendant off the ear of India,” Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his...

Most Westerners working in Afghanistan spend their time tucked inside a military compound or embassy. Not Deborah Rodriguez. Now, she tells the story of the beauty school she founded in the middle of Kabul and the vibrant women who were her students.

When Rodriguez opened the Kabul Beauty...

Pat Garrett was the sheriff of Lincoln County who killed Billy the Kid. When Garrett’s book appeared, eight lurid dime novels had glorified and falsified the Kid, making him into a murderous super-outlaw. Garrett’s book tells the more genuine story of a young, reckless cowhand who became a...