Publishers' Page

October/November 1995, pg. 122

Publishers' Page

Did Arafat Give Away the Store?

Or, in his words, "make peace irreversible" by signing the Oslo II agreement? We really don't know and neither does he because, although Oslo II has a lot more written down than Oslo I, how things work out in the short run, at least, depends upon how the Israelis let them work out.

And What Israel Does Depends...

Less on who is prime minister of Israel over the next three years than who is president of the United States over the next four. We submit some thoughts on Oslo II on page 6, and on the upcoming U.S. elections on page 32.

Will Our President Produce Peace in Bosnia?

Maybe. What's important, we think, is to see that it lasts, and that it also buttresses the forces of international law and order. More on page 15.

We've Been Busy With Books...

Throughout September, laying in new titles for the run-up to Christmas. To facilitate ordering you should find, along with your Washington Report 1996 calendar, a list of titles by author inside the plastic wrap around this issue of the magazine. You can use it to facilitate ordering and drop it into the postage paid envelope in the center of the magazine.

If You're Not a Rockefeller...

But still would like to help us out, Christmas shop with us. We buy books in very large quantities to get the best prices. That's also why we have cookbooks, kids' books, and literature in translation along with the political titles you won't find anywhere else. The more books we sell, the cheaper we can sell them, and the closer we will come to breaking even on what essentially is a service to subscribers.

Thanks to a Second-Generation Volunteer...

We're also catching up on a huge backlog of donated library book packages. Eli Barsoum, a foreign service officer and prominent Middle East specialist, retired in the early 1980s and volunteered his services to the American Educational Trust. After his death a few years later his son, Peter Barsoum, said he would like to take over some of his dad's duties, and did so while he finished his undergraduate studies. Then he went off to Tunis for a two-year tour with the Peace Corps. After that he volunteered his services again until he went off to London for graduate studies. This summer and early fall he was back for a few weeks and together he and Book Club Director Ely Dieng...

Nearly Swept the Cupboard Bare.

After they had carted a few hundred packages to the post office, the post office began sending a truck twice a day to load up. Pictured is Peter Barsoum surrounded by one half day's packages. Their efforts will have injected about 15,000 books (approximately the total contents of a medium-size public library) about the Middle East into America's libraries in September and early October all thanks to the generosity of donors to the AET Library Endowment. Congratulations, Angels!

Apropos of Angels...

We think at last we've got a computer program that will keep a tally on your donated subscriptions and books, library donations, and cash donations and, at the end of the year, put you into the right category in our Angels' Choir. Admittedly, we have a bad track record on this, but if you don't believe we can do it, try us and find out.

Reminiscences of Saudi Arabia...

There are two of them on pages 52 and 53 of this issue by veteran writers for this magazine. George Thompson is a retired foreign service officer who now lives in Melbourne, Florida, where he writes for Florida Today and has his own weekly TV show. Grace Halsell came from Texas to Washington, DC to serve in the Lyndon Johnson White House, and stayed to write some 26 books, many of them based on under-cover exploits as an investigative reporter. Their articles were supposed to be part of the special section on Saudi Arabia in our September issue, but got bumped by breaking stories. We did special sections on Kuwait and Oman earlier this year, and plan special issues on...

The UAE, Pakistan and Yemen...

In coming months. If you've lived or worked in any of those places, we'd welcome your reminiscences or ruminations about people, places and changes you've seen. With or without articles, we'd also like to see then-and-now photos of places in those and other Middle East countries as you photographed them, and as they look today. But don't send us your only copies of such photos. This place is the Bermuda Triangle of vanished articles, photos, computer disks and audiotapes!

About the Janadriya Camel Races...

Whoa, Nelly, not so fast! In our rush to get a beautiful book of color photos of Saudi Arabia (from which many of the photos of Saudi Arabia in our September issue were taken), into our book catalog in time for Christmas shoppers we leaped to an unwarranted conclusion that we could get it from the Saudi publisher at a low enough price to offer it to our readers at $30. We can't. The book would cost us $70 per copy, and that's too steep for us and, we suspect, most of our readers. So disregard the Al Janadriya listings in the book catalog and book list, which were pre-printed. They're no longer valid.

Maybe When There's a 2nd Edition...

We can try again.

We Felt Confident Enough...

To schedule eight issues of the Washington Report this year. And we're going through with them, although each issue costs us $40,000 for printing and postage alone, and the presses don't roll and the postage account doesn't get refilled until all previous debts are settled. It looks now like we might come up significantly short before the end of the year. We don't think it's an existential question, but...

If You Haven't Donated Yet...

This year to the American Educational Trust, or to the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment (Federal ID No. 52-1460362) and you've been meaning to get around to doing it...

It Would Help a Lot...

If you would do it RIGHT NOW! You can stuff the donation check right in with your book order in the envelope in the middle of the magazine (or purchase and/or donate on your credit card) and ...