Astra Speaker Series Fall 2015 / Winter 2016
ASTRA, College of Arts and the University Bookstore present Gywnne Dyer
DON'T PANIC! But You Can Worry A Little
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Science Complex Atrium
7:00 p.m.
Book sales and signing after the talk.
Islamic State will take over the Middle East, and the terrorists will eat us hair and all. Climate change is completely out of control. A new Cold War is coming over Ukraine. Or so we are told. But it ain't necessarily so.
GWYNNE DYER has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years, but he was originally trained as an historian. Born in Newfoundland, he received degrees from Canadian, American and British universities, finishing with a Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern History from the University of London. He served in three navies and held academic appointments at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University before launching his twice-weekly column on international affairs, which is published by over 175 papers in some 45 countries.
His first television series, the 7-part documentary 'War', was aired in 45 countries in the mid-80's. One episode, 'The Profession of Arms', was nominated for an Academy Award. His more recent works include the 1994 series 'The Human Race', and 'Protection Force', a three-part series on peacekeepers in Bosnia, both of which won Gemini awards. His award-winning radio documentaries include 'The Gorbachev Revolution', a seven-part series based on Dyer's experiences in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in 1987-90, and 'Millenium', a six-hour series on the emerging global culture.
In Canada, Dyer's column appears regularly in the Telegram in St. John's, the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, La Presse in Montreal, the Kingston Whig-Standard, the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, the London Free Press, the Winnipeg Free Press, Vue in Edmonton, the Calgary Herald, the Georgia Straight in Vancouver, and about sixty other newspapers.
Outside North America, papers that use Dyer's column regularly include the Japan Times, the Korea Times, the Straits Times (Singapore), the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), the Canberra Times, the New Zealand Herald, The Pioneer (New Delhi), DNA (Bombay, The Telegraph (Calcutta), Dawn (Karachi), 7 Days (Dubai), the Bahrain Tribune, Arab News (Saudi Arabia), the Jordan Times, the Jerusalem Post, the Turkish Daily News, the Moscow Times, Lidove Noviny (Prague), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Information (Copenhagen), NRC Handelsblad (Rotterdam), De Standaard (Brussels), Zeitpunkt (Switzerland), Internazionale (Rome), Daily Vision (Uganda), The Star (Nairobi), The Citizen (Johannesburg), the Cape Times, and the Buenos Aires Herald.
Dyer's books include "Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq" (2003), "Future: Tense" (2005) and "The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq" (2007), all of which were number one or number two on the Globe & Mail's non-fiction best-seller list. A new edition of his classic book "War" was published in 2006.
His more recent works include "Climate Wars", which deals with the geopolitical implications of large-scale climate change. It was published in the US and the UK by Oneworld, in Canada by Random House, and in Australia and New Zealand by Scribe. It has been translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and a number of other languages.
Random House published “Canada in the Great Power Game, 1914-2014” to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. His new book, “Don’t Panic: Islamic State, Terrorism and the Middle East”, has just been published by Random House.
In the spring of 2012, Gwynne Dyer was made an officer of the Order of Canada.