You could perhaps better tell the story of a place by writing of a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing. It struck me as a better way to learn about a place, or at least a different way, than just going to interview the president. So I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there. But I'm just amazed.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did... In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight

I think that [Donald] Trump is frankly a bigot. He has a racist history.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding

There are ten times as many sex slaves transported around the globe today as agrarian slaves were transported in the 1790s.