lukebrown

a regular writer and co-founder of Polo's Bastards Adventure Travel.

Pakistan: No, Thank You

Before I came to Pakistan I thought that being identified as an Australian might have its drawbacks, due to the war in Iraq. But, as of yet, that has not been the case. Rather, Australia’s ground breaking win in the 2003 Cricket World Cup has been quite the conversation continuer, with a western face the…

Book Review: “The Mystery of Capital”

by Hernando de Soto (Bantam Press – 243 pages) Reviewer – Luke Brown The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its hour of crisis. So begins the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto’s intriguing work on his view why Capitalism has triumphed in the West, but seemingly failed so many in the developing and former communist…

Pakistan: Riding the Iron Chicken Bus

I dread travelling on buses, particularly in the third world. They invariably stop all the times you don’t need them to and never when you do. To make matters worse, many buses don’t have toilets on them, rest stops seemingly don’t have toilets, even though at times the ones they choose resemble a toilet. So…

Book Review: “India: A History” by John Keay

(HarperCollins – 576 pages) Reviewer – Luke Brown India: a history, by John Keay, attempts to chart the course of the history of India from around 3000 BC to the end of the century just passed, in one volume. It was always going to be a tough task. 5,000 years contains an immense amount of…

Book Review: “Pakistan: A Modern History” by Ian Talbot

(Hurst & Company, London – 432 pages) Reviewer – Luke Brown Admittedly its birth as a nation state is more recent than most, but it is still surprising that there are not more books devoted to Pakistan’s turbulent history. Although its fierce rivalry with India (as notably played out with the Kashmir conflict and mutually…

Press Freedom in China

Reading the English version of China’s People’s Daily on the Internet, one gets the heartening impression that the Chinese government is tackling the growing AIDS crisis head on. Headlines like “Facing AIDS, Silence is Death” and “China Warned of 12 Million HIV Carriers in 8 Years if no Measures Taken” attest to this new openness.…