Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

Basra + Oil = Poverty

Iraq’s reserves of oil are among the largest in the world yet the country has endured all but non-stop warfare and dictatorship for much of the last few decades. A large portion of its oil is located around Basra, in the south of the country. As the New York Times explains in an  ...  (Read more)

The Page 99 Test

A few weeks ago I received an email from Marshal Zeringue, who runs several literary blogs including one that’s called “The Page 99 Test.” Its title comes from Ford Madox Ford, who once advised, “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will ...  (Read more)