Thirty Days Has September by Christopher Stevens

Indeed, Stevens sent a cable to Washington on September 11 recounting the locals' concerns about the lawlessness. The Libyan government had yet to stand up a proper police force, and violence had been intermittent all summer-some random and criminal, some targeted against Westerners. Benghazi, on the other hand, was dodgier. In the main residence, a steel grate could be dropped and locked, turning half the building into a safe haven within that, moreover, was a smaller room, even more isolated, with food and water and medical supplies and no exterior exposure.Ĭhâteau Christophe was reasonably secure for the ambassador's business trip. Screens in the tactical-operations center monitored the security cameras mounted on the perimeter.

There were steel drop bars at the gates to control vehicles coming in and concrete Jersey barriers both inside and out to prevent a ramming attack. The wall surrounding it was nine feet high and topped with an additional three feet of concertina wire. The property was 300 yards deep and a hundred yards wide, which gave the buildings a significant setback from outside attacks. Still, Château Christophe was not unprotected. In snappy, lively and often very funny chapters, it uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors, and shows how they are still in constant use today - the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases.As a temporary mission-as opposed to a more formal consulate or embassy-the facility was less fortified than many U.S. Written in Stone combines detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, and the sheer fascination of words to explore that original mother tongue, sketching the connections woven throughout the immense vocabulary of English - with some surprising results. It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today - the DNA of language. It was a language that spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia. It was so effective that it flourished for two thousand years. A mother tongue first spoken in Stone Age times, on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago. Half the world's population speaks a language that has evolved from a single, prehistoric mother tongue. Witty and erudite, Written in Stone is the first etymology book to reveal how the English language is based on original Stone Age words.

Thirty Days Has September by Christopher Stevens