Word: centralizes
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...Spending summer weekends at the spacious patio and pool is de rigueur for the Kabul social set, though conversations tend toward war stories rather than the latest charity ball. In fact, so central is L'Atmo to the lives of the Afghan capital's foreign community, Victor and Cressaty have opened a branch in Kabul's sandbag-ringed NATO compound. This is so that troops - who aren't allowed around town without a humvee escort - can get a decent meal with relative ease. To quote the restaurateurs' compatriot, Napoleon Bonaparte, "an army marches on its stomach." Dishes like L'Atmo...
...Vassanji's The Assassin's Song is a more complex but ultimately less satisfying examination of similar turf. The central character, Karsan, is destined to be the latest in a centuries-long familial line to inherit the Shrine of the Wanderer, an important place of Sufi worship in India's Gujarat state. But as a young man he falls out with his father and loses his faith, escaping to North America instead. When he returns, after the riots that ripped apart Gujarat in 2002, Karsan is forced to re-examine his beliefs, his family and himself...
...longer of the two books, The Assassin's Song jumps between the late 13th century and the past half-century, and while the technique adds some emotional heft and spiritual context to the story, it ultimately distracts from the central plot. Vassanji captures important moments in Indian history - the war with China in 1962 and the 2002 riots - in wonderful detail that links to the personal tale at the center of the novel. But the undoubtedly painstaking research can also grow too heavy and sometimes leaves one wanting more story and less history lesson...
...professional force, opening the West Point-inspired Defense Services Academy. The military also burnished its legitimacy in another way, claiming to be the only force that could keep the country together. Burma is composed of more than 100 ethnic groups, many of which waged wars and insurgencies against the central government for decades. Politicians, the generals asserted, represented feuding ethnic interests. In Burma's last election - back in 1990 - as many as 20 ethnically based political parties contested the polls. Who better, the military argued, to keep peace among all these fractious tribal groups...
...What happened to this President? The money needed for expanding health care to poor children in America is far less than the money that has been lost and wasted on corruption in Iraq. How have the priorities strayed so far from those children, whom he once agreed were so central to the soul of the nation? What do they need to do to get the President's attention again...