Articles

• The Enigma of Bhutan

  2018-08-22

  Two decades ago, nearly one-sixth of the population was forcibly expelled. How did King Wangchuck escape any real censure? By Kai Bird MARCH 7, 2012

  
  

• The Case for Disengagement in the Middle East

  2018-08-22

  It is time to walk away and leave the region to its own bad behavior. By Kai Bird MARCH 23, 2015

  
  

• Freeman Dyson’s Life, Through His Letters

  2018-08-21

  As a reader, I was enthralled by this collection of Freeman Dyson’s letters. But as a biographer, I am most annoyed with him for having squirreled all these missives away.

  
  

• An Acclaimed Biographer Takes On Her Grandfather, the Atomic Scientist James B. Conant

  2018-08-21

  Biography is a notoriously arduous affair. Typically, the biographer spends years in the archives, sifting through documents, folder by folder, box by endless box.

  
  

• Some 'October surprise' conspiracies turn out to be true

  2018-08-21

  We Americans love conspiracies. They are like good spy stories: entertaining, intriguing and tantalizing. But historians learn to hate conspiracy stories.

  
  

• How to Keep an Atomic Bomb From Being Smuggled Into New York City? Open Every Suitcase With a Screwdriver.

  2018-08-21

  This is a strangely captivating book — dark and utterly frightening, despite or perhaps because of the author’s dispassionate tone.

  
  

• New York Times Op Ed on Dec 25, 2014

  2015-01-01

  Israel: A Jewish Republic? by Kai Bird

  
  

• Robert Ames and the CIA's History of Back-channel talks with 'the bad guys'

  2014-11-20

  Kai Bird Op Ed in LA Times

  
  

• Robert Oppenheimer & the "Screwdriver Report"

  2014-09-16

  NEW YORK In the spring of 1946, J. Robert Oppenheimer was asked in a closed congressional hearing room whether three or four men couldn't smuggle units of an atomic bomb into New York and "blow up the whole city.

  
  

• Would JFK Have Left Vietnam: An Exchange in the NYRB

  2010-09-30

  In his essay “Mac Bundy Said He Was ‘All Wrong’” [NYR, June 10], William Pfaff claims that Gordon Goldstein’s book Lessons in Disaster: