Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

5,000 Barrels a Day

The amount of oil that is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at BP’s broken well. The video shows one of the two main rupture points.
Update: Scientists who have seen the video say the leak is much more than 5,000 barrels a day.

We Are All Nigerians Now

In an interview on the marvelous “The World” radio program, I describe the ways in which the spill in the Gulf of Mexico has brought home to America, quite literally, the environmental ... (Read more)

Who Is This Photographer?

I’m trying to find the photographer who is on the tank in the pictures below (which are stills from a video). This was one of the first Marine tanks into Baghdad’s Firdos Square on April 9, 2003. If you know who the photographer is, please email me via peter at petermaass dot com. Thanks!
Update: ... (Read more)

Vive la France!

My French publisher, Autrement, has just come out with their version of Crude World. The French title is Pétrole Brut. The cover is fantastic, I think. For Autrement’s webpage about Pétrole Brut, ... (Read more)

World Bank Institute

Washington, D.C.
Lecture about oil and journalism.

Harvard Law School

Cambridge, MA
Discussion about oil with the photographer Ed Kashi. Refreshments will be served. Event co-sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Nieman Center for Journalism, and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. For more info, click here.

Location:
Harvard ... (Read more)

Second Time a Charm at Harvard?

After being postponed due to a snowstorm in February, my talk with photographer Ed Kashi takes place on Thursday at 5:30 pm at Harvard Law School (to be precise, in Griswold Hall, Room 110). We’ll discuss the problems of oil and the ways we’ve chosen, with pens and cameras, to document them. Should ... (Read more)