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  They sit on the floor around a low table, inside a sumptuous mansion in Abu Dhabi where a pet falcon, hooded, stands on the floor in the entryway. His Excellency Mahomed Khalaf al Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Corporation and head of the state’s Culture and Heritage authority, has invited me to…

I count as very high praise indeed the review by Karl Meyer at Truthdig.net today. Meyer, a former editorial writer at The New York Times and foreign correspondent before that, wrote the definitive book about the issues of plundered antiquities some 35 years ago, called "The Plundered Past." (I refer to it in my introduction.)…

When you get off the plane in Dubai, they hand you a map of the city. It's a pretty simple urban plan, with the city concentrated around its origins of a broad creek, and arrayed against the blue coastline of the Arabian Gulf. Then you look more closely at the map and you see a…

The defense has been putting on its case. Detective Cranham of the Beverly Hills police department was called to the stand and questioned as to whether she had interviewed the rape victims, or alleged ones, in person or by phone. It emerged that some were only interviewed by phone. The defense is also trying to…

Here’s something I didn’t expect about Dubai: it doesn’t feel very Arab. Most of the faces you see on the streets and in the malls are non-Arab. My cab driver is Ethiopian. My waitress is Philippine. The hotel security guard is Pakistani. Only every so often do you see a figure in a flowing white…

The first excerpt from "Loot" is up on "The Daily Beast," ahead of publication on October 28. Here’s how it starts: One thing stood out about the Getty Museum, and that was the sex. Numerous current and former Getty employees describe the atmosphere from the 1970s onward as convivial in the most carnal sense of…