Doom and Gloom at Eibf . . .But Some Very Nice Whisky Iain Macwhirter's Restricted View

Summary

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FOR hacks like me, chairing sessions at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) is a little like going back to university. The difference is that you get to interrogate in person some of those academic authorities whose works are held in awe by undergraduates and politicians alike. It can be a disarming experience.

I'm not quite sure what I expected the US neo-conservative thinker Francis Fukuyama - author of The End Of History And The Last Man - to be like in person. But I assumed there would be at least some of the trademark neuron swagger, intellectual arrogance and God- bless-America chauvinism. After all, he was the soulmate of the arch Republican hawk, Paul Wolfowitz. I couldn't have been more wrong.

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Extract

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Doom and Gloom at Eibf . . .But Some Very Nice Whisky Iain Macwhirter's Restricted View

In the author's yurt I discovered a diminutive, unassuming academic in jeans who'd lost his bags on his Edinburgh flight. On stage, he was subdued, almost penitent about the Iraq war, which his neo-con colleagues championed. H...

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