In an opening chapter on how the Middle East plays in American minds, he shows how moments in Middle Eastern history used to be reported in the National Geographic, a popular magazine that at least at one time was a window on the world for millions of middle-class Americans.

ECONOMIST: Arabs and Americans

The year 2009 will indeed, here and across the world, be a chance to recognise this form of communication as an essential liberator, a window on the world for children reading their books (under their bedcovers, as I did), or adults being able to go about their business with confidence - and with the certainty that very few other people will be able to read their secrets.

BBC: Why Braille is brilliant

The pan-Arab satellite television networks -- so different from the sclerotic state broadcasters -- gave Arabs a new window on the world.

CNN: Gadhafi's demise and the Arab Spring

The SPS chief executive replied that television could be a "window on the world".

BBC: A television in a cell at Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow

This formation provides a unique window on the world 540m years ago, when animal life was getting going in a big way.

ECONOMIST: Stephen Jay Gould

The phone's screen acts as a window on to the augmented world overlaying it with arrows, signs and other cues to help navigate through an industrial plant to the faulty equipment.

BBC: IBM's robot sidekick aims to aid field engineers

Look out the window and you see the real world -- click a button on your iPad app and you can open the sunroof to see more of the same.

ENGADGET: Canon MREAL Mixed Reality headset hands-on (video)

In so doing, they open a window on how Scotland in the 1690s understood the world around it.

UNESCO: 2010 UK Memory of the World Register

However it gets there, that piece of jewelry adorning a world-class model on a fashion runway, being shown at a world-renowned fashion house, or appearing behind the window at your local jeweler, has a history and a story that will most likely never be known.

FORBES: All that Glitters is Beauty and Business