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Tag Archives: middle east
Prisoner of Tehran / Marina Nemat
3 July 2008 – 10:30 am
By no means am I an expert on Iran. Even though my knowledge of the country and its politics since the 1979 revolution is limited, I can’t say I learned a whole lot from this memoir. And Ms. Nemat’s writing style is fairly dry and devoid of emotional affectation. Sometimes that’ good and helps a work avoid the maudlin. And in this case, it meant I never had a solid emotional reaction to the horrors Ms. Nemat endured. More clinical I guess. (…)
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid / Jimmy Carter
4 November 2007 – 11:32 am
When this book came out last year, there was a lot of controversy. Some people said it was sloppy. Some folks said it was anti-Semitic. Several Carter Center employees resigned. I heartily subscribe to the belief that the Palestinians get a raw deal. There is periodic unacceptable violence against Israelis. Comparatively speaking though, Israel’s citizens live in peace and security compared to the Palestinians. That hasn’t always been the case. (…)
The Freedom / Christian Parenti
28 September 2007 – 12:11 am
The Freedom is The Nation writer Christian Parenti’s first-person account of his stints reporting on the war in Iraq from the frontlines during 2003 and the first half of 2004. It’s a moving account, and covers ground I haven’t read in newspapers or magazines. That’s not to say it hasn’t been written, but I haven’t seen it.
For its descriptions of the facts on the ground, I don’t think the book is very useful anymore. (…)
Al-Jazeera / Mohammed el-Nawawy & Adel Iskandar
31 August 2005 – 9:09 pm
This $7.98 Powell’s purchase was quite the find. First, the negative about the book. Usually, I have more negative than positive, cause I’m just cranky. But not this time. My criticism of the book is that the authors rely on anecdotal exposition more than they should. For instance, to assert that Al-Jazeera is objective, they could have offered studies or statistics of Al-Jazeera’s coverage. (…)
