Ansary uses the problem of translating poetry as a frame for examining the difficulty of communication across any border—cultural, historical, or personal. Using anecdotes from his own experiences as a bilingual person, he elaborates on the idea that no message can be mapped directly from one language to another: because of the countless assumptions and understandings wedding any message to its cultural context, switching languages entails switching frameworks. Yet understanding how an entire cultural framework is involved in every word and phrase of a language also points toward ways that the West can comprehend the world as experienced by the East, how people of the twenty-first century can comprehend the world as experienced by people of the past, how we as individuals can comprehend the world as seen by any other person.

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Ansary moves from a long view of Afghanistan in the context of world history to his own experiences in Afghanistan after the events of September 11, to the destruction of Afghanistan in recent decades and the subsequent U.S. attempt to restore the country. He illuminates the origins of the Taliban, its ties to Al Qaeda, the evolution of the Taliban into current times, the social turmoil in the country now, and the implications of events in Afghanistan for Pakistan, Iran, the former Soviet Republics, the broader region, and, most importantly, the people of the United States. Ansary draws upon his own background as an Afghan and ten years of studying, lecturing, and writing about this complicated country to illuminate what went wrong and how it might be set right.

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Ansary discusses what it was like to grow up in Afghanistan, but with one foot already in America, contrasting life in a highly conservative Islamic society to that in post-modern United States and exploring, along the way, such thorny topics as the burqa and the position of women in Islamic society. Stories from a bi-cultural childhood illuminate how and why the worldview of Afghans typically differ from those of Americans. This discussion elaborates on themes touched upon in Ansary's bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York.

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A workshop and discussion for writing students about the differences, similarities, and interrelationships between writing fiction and writing memoir, with a focus on strategies for discovering the story arc in real experiences, for bringing memoir to life by tapping the techniques of narrative fiction, and for bringing realism to fiction by tapping real life experiences. Ansary draws upon ideas and understandings drawn from eleven years of running the San Francisco Writer's Workshop, one of of America's oldest writing workshops, as well as the strategies he brought to bear in producing his acclaimed memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York.

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Beginning with a look at the historical unfolding of Islam in its first millenium, Ansary moves on to explore the reformist currents of the last two centuries and the challenge Islamic thinkers face in trying to formulate a theology relevant to industrial modernism. A discussion of intellectual currents in the Islamic world is analyzed in the context of the Muslim experience with imperialism and of its own growing political impotence. This lecture touches on themes discussed in Ansary's recent book, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.

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World history as commonly taught in Western schools traces a development from Mesopotamia and Egypt, through Greece and Rome, and then to the Dark Ages, which is followed by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of modern democratic nations. Ansary contrasts this to an alternative narrative he learned growing up: world history as seen from the perspective of the Islamic world, a perspective that places Islam at the center of history, regards the Dark Ages as one of the brighter ages, and sees the Crusades and the Mongol invasions as pivotal turning points. This lecture explores the relativity of historical narratives and proposes a world historical story from a global perspective, a theme explored and elaborated in Ansary's bestselling book Destiny Disrupted, A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.

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