Michael Soussan

Michael Soussan's first book, the ironically titled "Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course In international Diplomacy (available in Hardcover, Paperback, and Kindle) has recently been optioned by Hollywood after receiving exceptional critical acclaim, including from by the Sunday Times, which praised its humorous insight and Catch-22-like tone, and the Wall Street Journal, which named it a "best book of the year." The Washington Film Institute described it as "NBC's THE OFFICE meets CLOONEY's SYRIANA"- And yet it is a true story - the story of our collective behavior, as an international community, toward the people of Iraq, from the end of the cold war to the onset of the war on terror. See digest of critical reviews at:ttp://www.michaelsoussan.com/pages/book_praise.html Soussan's experience takes us behind the scenes of the world stage and offers a truly original first hand account of world events, seen from the eyes of an absolute beginner in the world of international diplomacy. His early gaffes and his determination to make logical sense of a deeply incoherent environment provokes a mix of darkly comical experiences, which in turn offer original insight into forces at play, both on and off the world stage After resigning from the UN, Michael Soussan made a transition to writing, producing, and teaching. He contributed editorial articles to the New York Times' International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, Prospect Magazine (UK), Salon, The Irish Times, The New York Post, CNN,Online, FoxNews.com, Commentary Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, among others. An independent observer, his stories have attracted interest from a wide range of publishers from all sides of the political spectrum. He is a regular contributor to the Providence Journal editorial pages, which published his first professional article while he was still an undergraduate at Brown University. He holds an MA in International Relations from Science-Po in Paris, a certificate in film directing from NYU, and a BA from Brown, where he founded and edited The Brown Journal of World Affairs, also available twice yearly in bookstores nationwide Soussan has been invited to lecture by various organizations including the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), the Ditchley House in Oxford, the Harvard Club of New York, the London School of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, the MIT book club, and the World Affairs Council. He has also testified before the House International Relations Committee of the US Congress. Soussan has been interviewed by over a dozen of NPR radio stations, as well as the BBC, CNN, FOX News, ABC News, SKYNEWS, among others. Prior to becoming an author, Soussan worked at CNN and at the United Nations, where he served as Program Coordinator for the United Nations Iraq Program. He currently teaches international affairs and the Iraq conflict at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and lives in New York City. He recently developed a new popular course called "writing About Global Affairs" through which he mentors a number of aspiring writers in the field Michael is reachable at michaelsoussan@yahoo.com and has a habit of responding to mails from readers.