Edward Alden, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, used to be a journalist. His long experience in the field – including serving as Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times – meant that he’s more used to asking questions than answering them. “I write about other people,” he joked. We think he did an admirable job. The only question he couldn’t answer? Describing himself in five words or fewer, too difficult a task, he said, for someone now accustomed to writing books.

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. Classical music playing on NPR’s FM radio station. It’s soothing.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Mountains.

Q. What do you consider beautiful?
A. My wife.

Q. If you could live in any other time, past, present, or future, when would it be and why?
A. I would have lived in the 1920s, because that was when the world was opening up to a lot of people.

Q. When are you most creative?
A. When I’m alone at home.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. A Cannondale road bike.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Nepal.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Professional skier.

Q. Whose talent would you most like to have?
A. Lance Armstrong’s.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Taking the train across Canada when my family moved to Vancouver.

Q. Who was your favorite Beatle and why?
A. John. He was the most politically passionate.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. My bicycle.

Q. Who is the one person, living or dead, that you’d love to have a beer with?
A. George Orwell.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.