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Find out moreMichael Hastings was NEWSWEEK's Baghdad Correspondent. 'The Runaway General' was his first story for ROLLING STONE. He's thirty years old.
On April 16th 2010, Michael Hastings spent the night in Kitty O'Shea's Irish pub in Paris with General Stanley McChrystal and his handpicked inner circle. By midnight they were all three sheets to the wind, linking arms and chanting 'Afghanistan!' at the top of their lungs. It was day two of what would turn out to be an extraordinary month. Soon after Hastings flew to Afghanistan with McChrystal. Over the weeks that followed he was privy to everything the General and his team did and saw, including unguarded opinions of the President, of General Petraeus, of Hamid Karzai. 'The Runaway General' piece in Rolling Stone that caused a sensation around the world and led directly to McChrystal's dismissal.
General Stanley McChrystal, commander of international and US forces in Afghanistan, was living large, with staff calling him a 'rock star.' Journalist Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone looked on as McChrystal and his staff let off steam, partying and openly bashing the Obama administration. When Hastings' piece appeared a few months later, it set off a political firestorm: McChrystal was ordered to Washington, where he was unceremoniously fired. Hastings gives us a shocking behind-the-scenes portrait of Allied military commanders, their high-stakes manoeuvres and often bitter bureaucratic in-fighting.
The work-room of a Savile Row tailors, 1953. Two master craftsmen at daggers drawn: Polish-born Spijak insists that nothing can beat the excellence of a hand-sewn suit, while Eric uses his machine to work at twice the speed and earn twice the money. Sparks fly as each fights his own corner with biting wit and vicious humour. Into this battleground steps Maurice, a teenager at the very start of his apprenticeship. Will he survive the gruelling training to become a master tailor? Or will he, as Spijak's daughter urges him to, escape? The Cutting of the Cloth, drawn so much from Hastings's youthful experience as an apprentice tailor, has lain in a drawer. Now Two's Company brings it rampaging on to the stage.
A posthumous debut novel-wry, wise, and outrageous-from award-winning journalist Michael Hastings, based on his experiences working for NewsweekThe year is 2002. Weekly news magazines dominate the political agenda in New York and Washington. A young journalist named Michael M. Hastings is an intern at the Magazine, wet behind the ears, the only one in the office who has actually read his coworkers' books. He will stop at nothing to turn his internship into a full-time position and has figured out just who to impress: Nishant Patel, the international editor, and Sanders Berman, managing editor-both vying for the job of editor-in-chief. While Berman and Nishant try to one-up each other pontificating on cable news, A. E. Peoria-the one reporter seemingly doing any work-is having a career crisis. He has just returned from Chad, where instead of reporting on the genocide, he was told by his editors to focus on mobile-phone outsourcing, as it's more relevant. Then suddenly, the United States invades Iraq-and all hell breaks loose.As Hastings loses his naivete about the journalism game, he must choose where his loyalties lie: with the men at the Magazine who can advance his career or with his friend in the field who is reporting the truth.The Last Magazine is the debut novel from Michael Hastings, discovered in his files after his death in June 2013. Based on Hastings' own experiences, it is funny, sharp, and fast-paced, a great book about the news game's final days in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, and Calvin Trillin's Floater.
Dallas, Texas. 12.30pm. Friday, 22 November 1963. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Approximately 70 minutes later, assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. 48 hours later, Lee Harvey Oswald himself was murdered. Told through the eyes of Oswald's wife and mother, coupled with extracts from the Warren Commission's report, we follow the unsettled drifting life of Lee Harvey Oswald - his loveless marriage to his Russian wife, his challenging relationship with his mother and his pathological hatred of Kennedy's life and achievements. Oswald had the means, motive and opportunity, but did he even do it? Could a man who never did anything on his own murder a President? Based on Oswald's own diary notes and interviews (the subtitle comes from Oswald's diary in his own spelling), Lee Harvey Oswald has been performed from Tokyo to Mexico City to Prague, but never in the United States. Originally commissioned and performed at Hampstead Theatre in 1966 as The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald as part of their 'Living Theatre' series of documentary drama, this rediscovery is the first London production in over 40 years - and the first UK production since its original premiere, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.
The inspiration for the upcoming movie WAR MACHINE, starring Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and Ben Kingsley (streaming on Netflix from 26 May). General Stanley McChrystal, the innovative commander of international and US forces in Afghanistan, was living large. Loyal staff liked to call him a 'rock star'. During a spring 2010 trip across Europe to garner additional Allied help for the war effort, McChrystal was accompanied by journalist Michael Hastings of ROLLING STONE. For days, Hastings looked on as McChrystal and his staff let off steam, partying and openly bashing the Obama administration for what they saw as a lack of leadership. When Hastings' piece appeared a few months later, it set off a political firestorm: McChrystal was ordered to Washington, where he was unceremoniously fired. In THE OPERATORS, Hastings gives us a shocking behind-the-scenes portrait of Allied military commanders, their high-stakes manoeuvres and often bitter bureaucratic in-fighting. He takes us on patrol missions in the Afghan hinterlands and to hotel bars where spies and expensive hookers participate in nation-building gone awry, drawing back the curtain on a hellish complexity and, he fears, an unwinnable war.
With a gun, a typewriter, and a wolf-hound, Annie fires up her junker and embarks on a journey across America seeking a long-lost daughter. At seventy years old, driven mad with guilt, alienated from her family, angry at the world, Annie has little time to make it right. It all happened so fast - the infant ripped from her arms at birth, then hustled away, the forcing of her signature on the adoption papers...Annie aches for her daughter's understanding, forgiveness, and love. What she gets is, redemption. Neurotic, funny, and enduring, Annie Hastings narrates the conflicts she confronts, and at times creates. They must all be conquered and overcome before finding her daughter and facing a truth buried in Annie's past...A birthmother on a mission and an oldster on a mission!
It is Cambridge, 1915, and Tom, and awkward American graduate, meets Viv. Enchanted with each other, the couple are sucked into a whirlwind romance, but as Tom begins to become successful in the field of literature, Viv's volatility becomes a problem rather than a quirk. Their swift marriage turns into an impossible love story. Tom and Viv explores the complex relationship between T.S Eliot and his wife, Vivienne. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1984, and was made into a major motion picture starring William Defoe and Miranda Richardson in 1994. A new production opens at the Almeida Theatre, London in September 2006.
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