Tom Verde

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Tom Verde (tomverde.pressfolios.com) is a senior contributor to AramcoWorld. Like the majority of those who responded to a 2015 global survey, his favorite color is blue. 

Articles by Tom Verde

Sweet Memories of a Middle Eastern Childhood: A Conversation with Salma Hage

Sweet Memories of a Middle Eastern Childhood: A Conversation with Salma Hage

Acclaimed cookbook author Salma Hage grew up in the mountains of the Kadisha Valley in Northern Lebanon. Like many cooks, she learned her craft at her mother’s knee, as well as those of other female relatives in her household, where she often took on the role of cook for her eleven siblings. Her most recent book, Middle Eastern Sweets, pays homage to the many sweet endings to traditional family meals plus the rich multicultural influences that have defined Lebanon and the region for centuries. 
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On the Origins of Gothic Architecture: A Conversation with Diana Darke

On the Origins of Gothic Architecture: A Conversation with Diana Darke

With its rose windows and soaring, pointed arches, Gothic architecture is a crowning achievement of medieval Western Christendom but not, writes Oxford-educated Arabist Diana Darke, an independently developed one. 
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How a Story of Bread Became a Sharing of Culture: A Conversation With Marina Abrams

How a Story of Bread Became a Sharing of Culture: A Conversation With Marina Abrams

In this colorful, educational children's book, Marina Abrams summons her childhood memories along the Kazakhstan-China border, all brought to life and imagination by Tajik illustrator Farrukh Negmatzade.
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The New York of Anthony Jansen van Salee

The New York of Anthony Jansen van Salee

His 19th- and 20th-century descendants became some of New York’s most glittering glitterati, but when this son of a pirate arrived in the fledgling colonial outpost of New Amsterdam in 1629 and became the first Muslim to own property in the future U.S., conflicts with Dutch authorities nearly undid his ambitions.
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The Quest for Blue

The Quest for Blue

Rare in nature and difficult to extract from minerals, blue eluded artisans for centuries until Egyptians invented the world’s first synthetic pigment. Formulas for blues from cobalt and indigo followed, and the results have delighted our eyes and evoked the sacred, the royal, the opulent and the mysterious ever since. And the quest is not over.
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The Dialogues of Don Quixote

The Dialogues of Don Quixote

Amid the fearful turbulence of the 17th century, Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes invented a plot, characters and names that seemed innocently comical, but they cleverly cloaked his insistence that Spain recognize its historical diversity—and Don Quixote became the bestselling novel ever published.

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