Word: towards
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...Writers are often quite different in the flesh than in their books. And, on the eve of the release of Theroux's 47th, it was striking how much an author frequently chastised for snide condescension toward numerous realms and races appeared genuinely genial and warm-hearted. Was this really the same man taken to task for stereotyping Chinese train companions as venal, and writing of Africans that "the best of them are bare-assed"? (See the top 10 of nonfictin books...
...Asia. By staying low to the ground (mostly by rail) and true to his raw, first impressions - masterfully bending the dullest of travel encounters into revelations - he has etched indelible snapshots of much of the globe. His 1973 Saint Jack evoked Singapore in the swinging days before its turn toward a more staid Yuppiedom; Kowloon Tong captured the 1997 Hong Kong handover through the petty business deals and shared secrets of Chinese and interlopers. In both Riding the Iron Rooster and Sailing Through China, he made strong claims as a China hand - though he now has as little good...
...just over a decade ago that NATO forces bombed Belgrade in Operation Allied Force, a mission aimed at halting Serbia's brutal repression of Kosovo. Since then, Serbia has been slowly shaking off its status as a European pariah, inching toward the West and moving away from its historical ally, Russia. Then, on Tuesday, it turned a corner on its path to international respectability by formally entering a bid to join the European Union, a club that includes many of the countries that once tried to pulverize the Balkan nation...
...former Yugoslav republic that has managed to join the bloc; Serbia now joins Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey and Iceland in an ever-lengthening line of aspiring candidates. Almost all of the other applicants are further along the path to membership. And within the E.U., there is growing resistance toward adding new members, a sentiment known as "enlargement fatigue" following the recent accession of a dozen mainly eastern European countries...
...Another barrier to membership is Serbia's continuing belligerence toward Kosovo, where about 10,000 people were killed and 850,000 driven from their homes during the war. Although NATO ousted Belgrade's tanks from the territory in 1999, Serbia still refuses to accept the loss of its province. Indeed, Serbia's condemnation of Kosovo's declaration of independence last year even raised concerns about a possible new military intervention. "Serbia still needs to come to terms with the war crimes of the 1990s and go through the painful but essential process of breaking from the stranglehold of the nationalist...