Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain [during the Spanish Civil War], and it was, by far, the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever jo….

Speaking of Germany in 1933, I don't think you can remove yourself from politics when, in so many countries - the United States, Poland, Hungary, and….

The late Nadine Gordimer in South Africa, for example, had a wonderful ability to get her country's injustices and contradictions down on paper. Ditt….

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men ….

Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain - the Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane ….

No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at piece..

I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the huma….

Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism..

I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or t….

All of us living in today's world are facing an enormous crisis - arguably the greatest that humanity has ever faced - in the form of man-made global….

A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migra….

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hund….

Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War..

I can certainly sympathize with writers who don't want to put themselves or their loved ones at risk..

In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, ….

You know, by 1936, Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east. Mussolini, in 1935, went and then in the next year,….

Compared with how we've ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees - far….

One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place….

I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II. After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Ameri….

Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this t….

I'm after a snake and please God I'll scotch it..