Joshua Hammer

Dedicated with Doug Brunt

SiriusXM

Over Drinks, Books, Tv & Film, Novels, Lounge, Doug Brunt, Megyn Kelly, Author, Cocktail, Arts, Book

5.0 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joshua Hammer: Negroni (1 ounce gin, 1 ounce sweet vermouth, 1 ounce Compari, garnish with orange rind) Joshua tells of his harrowing kidnapping in Gaza in 2001 while he was the Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek, then of his second kidnapping in Iraq in 2004, recounts overlapping with Jon Meacham at the Reagan Ranch, gives his thoughts on how to structure a magazine piece and a book-length work of narrative history, tells the pros and cons of being an expat in Berlin, and paints a bleak picture for the future of the print magazine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Don't miss a thing from Dedicated. You can subscribe to the show on YouTube at Dedicated with
0:05.0	Doug Brunt to watch the latest interviews and clips from the show as well as watch me make the
0:08.7	drinks for our guests in studio. You can also subscribe to Instagram, X, and Facebook to keep up
0:13.8	with all the latest news, pictures, and updates from the show. Welcome to Dedicated with Doug Brunt.
0:20.4	You have just gained access to an exclusive insider's look at the lives and works of some of your favorite authors and hear conversations with the world's greatest writers as they discuss their writing lifestyle, creative process, latest work, and behind the scenes revelations.
0:40.0	Welcome back to Dedicated. Today, we're with Joshua Hammer. He is the author of six
0:44.3	nonfiction books. These are books that are written in this gripping, novelistic way. The latest
0:49.8	is called the Mesopotamian Riddle. This is about this crazy race and competition to decipher
0:56.0	the world's oldest language. Another title of Josh's that I love is the badass librarians of Timbuktu.
1:02.0	If that doesn't make you want to read it, I don't know what will. He's also been a foreign correspondent
1:06.0	and has served as bureau chief in Newsweek's, various places around the world for Newsweek,
1:12.0	including Jerusalem where he was kidnapped in Gaza
1:15.4	in the year 2001.
1:16.7	So we've got a lot of different things
1:18.5	we're gonna chat about with Josh over our Negronis.
1:21.9	Josh, welcome.
1:22.8	Great to be here, Doug, thanks.
1:24.0	Glad to catch you on your trip in.
1:25.9	I think you're currently in Berlin, right? Currently for many years now. Yeah. Let me get these Nogronies going, and then I want to dive in. As you know, we kind of start like your early days, how you got into writing. And I know you're a New Yorker originally and went to Horace Mann. That's a great school. I remember we were in the city in the early years from my kids. We're in kindergarten and, you know, everyone has the race to like, what about, you know, what schools or what? And Horace Mann is one of those hill schools up in the Bronx that is an exceptional school. You just take the number one train up to 242nd Broadway and walk up the hill to class.
2:01.5	That's awesome.
2:02.5	I don't think I've been on that line ever since I graduated, but it's a very vivid memory.
2:07.7	Yeah.
	...

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