Sharon Apple

Degas bronze and a Zaku II F2 Type

Alexandra Trese, Babaylan-Mandirigma of Manila, Sixth Child of the Sixth Child

Another one for Foreign Affairs, thanks as always to AD Ed Johnson. Lisa Anderson reviews Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, by Steven Simon. Simon argues that America does not understand (and has never understood) the region and that misunderstanding has lead to decades of conflict.

Another one for Foreign Affairs, thanks AD Ed Johnson. For Patrick Radden Keefe’s review of Matthew Connelly’s The Declassification Engine: What History Tells Us About America’s Top Secrets.

I used open-sourced, redacted US intelligence documents about sordid things like death squad funding, nuclear weapon blast radii, and casualty estimates for the “waves.” Just some more light fare in the editorial illustration world.

Today for Qingming, I want to offer up all the treats in the world: slivers of corn husks, tiny catnip pillows, warm laps, head scratches. I want to bridge the here and the there with an inferno of morning sun, casting squares on the floor.

Missing my friends that I lost this year, Eponine and Happy.

For Foreign Affairs Book Review, Fredrick Logevall’s review of Kennan: A Life Between Worlds by Frank Costigliola.

George F. Kennan was a US diplomat who was one of the architects for the policy of containment of the USSR during the Cold War, a policy which he later criticized. He famously wrote the “Long Telegram” from Moscow in 1946, explaining Soviet rationales, and the “X” article in Foreign Affairs, which he wrote under the pseudonym of Mr. X and outlined the policy of containment.

My AD Ed Johnson was able to source the original X Article from FA and we used it in this collage. Also used Soviet Era military maps, which meticulously documented the entire world, including the Pentagon.