Arthur Bonner, a "New York Times" reporter with long experience as a foreign correspondent in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, spent most of 1985 and 1986 in Afghanistan and Pakistan researching the aftermath of the 1979 Soviet invasion of this mountainous, fiercely Islamic country. Bonner made another trip to Pakistan in mid-1987 to test his conclusions against recent events.
Bonner therefore brings both recent experience and the sharp eye of a veteran journalist to an analysis of the Afghan situation: the tenacity and courage of the resistance, the massive emmigration, and the toll taken...

There are two Indias: the caste and class elite who hold all power and make up 10 to 15 percent of the population, and everyone else. "Averting the Apocalypse" is about everyone else. Arthur Bonner, a former "New York Times" reporter with long experience as a foreign correspondent in Asia, conducted interviews over many months while traveling almost 20,000 miles within India seeking out the underclass and social activists who together are beginning to mobilize for social change at the bottom of Indian society. Working in areas torn by violence, Bonner offers a terrifyingly accurate portrait...

The expulsion of at least 15,000 indigenous Mexicans from their lands and homes in the highlands of Chiapas is a text book illustration of this "complex brew". They were expelled when they accepted the Bible and refused to pay homage to what they saw as "idols" made by human hands -- the traditional village saints. In so doing, they challenged village leaders who were allied with Mexico's ruling political party. Were they being persecuted for their religious beliefs or for political reasons or, thirdly, for social reasons, in that they no longer accepted their traditional subservient roles?...