Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories
Author: Anna Badkhen
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ISBN: 9781439166482
Book Cover Type:
- Hardcover
Peace Meals is a true story about conflict and food. It illustrates the most important lesson Anna Badkhen has observed as a journalist: war can kill our friends and decimate our towns, but it cannot destroy our inherent decency, generosity, and kindness—that which makes us human. Badkhen writes:
There is more to war than the macabre—the white-orange muzzle flashes during a midnight ambush . . . the scythes of shrapnel whirling . . . like lawnmower blades spun loose; the tortured and the dead. There are also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself. Of those, sharing a meal is one of the most elemental.
No other book about war has looked at the search for normalcy in conflict zones through the prism of food. In addition to the events that dominate the news today—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—Peace Meals also bears witness to crises that are less often discussed: the conflict in Chechnya, the drought cycle in East Africa, the failed post-Soviet states, the Palestinian intifada.
Peace Meals focuses on day-to-day life, describing not just the shocking violence but also the beauty that continues during wartime: the spring flowers that bloom in the crater hollowed by an air-to-surface missile, the lapidary sanctuary of a twelfth-century palace besieged by a modern battle, or a meal a tight-knit family shares in the relative safety of their home as a firefight rages outside. It reveals how one war correspondent’s professional choices are determined not only by her opinion of which story is important but also by the instinctive comparisons she, a young
mother, makes each time she meets children in war zones; by her intrinsic sense of guilt for leaving her family behind as she goes off to her next dangerous assignment; and, quite prosaically—though not surprisingly—by her need to eat.
Wherever Badkhen went, she broke bread with the people she wrote about, and the simple conversations over these meals helped her open the door into the lives of strangers. Sometimes dinner was bread and a fried egg in a farmer’s hut, or a packet of trail mix in the back of an armored humvee. Sometimes it was a lavish, four-course meal at the house of a local warlord, or a plate of rice and boiled meat at a funeral tent. Each of these straightforward acts of humanity tells a story. And these stories, punctuated by recipes from these meals, form Peace Meals. Following Badkhen’s simple instructions, readers will taste what made life in these tormented places worth living.
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from 21 reviewsThis is a fascinating book delving into many different fields that connect to shells, including algorithmic modelling of sea shell construction, cowries as currency for human trafficking, etc. Very readable with high quality color plates in the center and a beautifully designed cover.
I love the book so much . It helps me alot through my letrature journey
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I found this book very very helping for understanding basic concepts of maths; geometry;algebra; fractions; decimals; percentage; polygons and much more; I suggest or even request parents to buy this book for their childrens to be come conceptual students.
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Really liked it but please also bring other books such as The Pentagon's Brain DARPA by Annie Jacobsen and Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman
The quality of the book was superb and delivery was really fast. Will definitely order again.... wish they would add more books to the store.
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Amazing book to understand interpersonal power dynamics and master them to drive and thrive in organisational settings.
