The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East,   ISBN:9781586486358

Customer Rating: 

Journalists are typically impartial observers and their insight is not framed by partisan elections that require short-term accomplishments. This author should be a top Middle East policy advisor to the State Dept and White House. Our approach to the people and government is mostly wrong, he says, and should be guided by their culture. Don't criticize the textbooks because that will be received as an attack against Islam. Ask instead why no internationally recognized scientist or technology expert has emerged from the Middle East for centuries. This book is a superb rendering of life on the ground across the Middle East in all its despair, religious fervor and secret police brutality. It's a wonder such strangled societies continue to exist and more remarkable that the author finds slender rays of determination to reform among them. [Audrey Hoffer, Wash, DC]

Customer Rating: 

Although I thought would bring details about Hezbollah, barely mention them. However, has some good reference from someone living there. Write as a memoire, it can turn boering and too long for too few insights. Still, worth reading it, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar/Al Jazeera TV and others, are deal in it.

Customer Rating: 

I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon as a New York City born son of the representative of an American corporation, pampered by local standards but with pretty much the run of the city. Not since From Beirut to Jeruselem have I sat with a book saying, "he gets it," and "yeah, that's right." Neil MacFarquhar is a damn good reporter who understands tribes and the difficulties of trying to apply American and European ideas of democracy to Middle East societies all at once. He understands the difference between human rights and American civil rights, like the relative importance of freedom from the secret police and female suffrage.

He manages to make it all readable and takes time to describe for us some of the delights of that part of the world - like what we used to call, "Lebanese lunch."

Highly recommended.

Customer Rating: 

MacFarquhar's book manages to both educate and entertain, and is a must read for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the Middle East. For those readers who have not yet explored the Middle East, the author's personal anecdotes provide an excellent and easy to understand overview of the wonderfully complex, contradictory, and often exasperating politics and personalities in the region. Readers who have traveled extensively in the Middle East will appreciate the author's deep knowledge and understanding of the region, and will likely be a bit envious of his access to such colorful characters. Whether you are an armchair traveler or have first-hand experience in the Middle East, you will certainly leave with an even deeper understanding of a region that is all too often presented as a black and white issue in Western media. (The chapter on Fatwas was probably my favorite - I have spent many a day hanging out with locals in various M.E. countries, and I cannot believe I have yet to have a conversation about this with anyone!)

Customer Rating: 

This is a pretty good memoir, evenly balanced between material familiar to people who work or have worked in the Middle East, being enough primer so that the average interested reader will not get lost, and insights that even the most seasoned worker/traveler in the Middle Eastern will find interesting. His analysis is often good, but he occasionally makes assumptions based on information from only a few informants, or informants who are in the upper echelons of society. We can't necessarily blame him for this, as it is the usual way journalists on deadline compile stories. MacFarquhar is more sensitive than most journalists, more tuned-in to the pulse of the various societies he encounters. For example I much prefer MacFarquhar to his NY Times colleague, Thomas Friedman. But ultimately he is a Western journalist on a deadline and while this won't detract readers from the many pleasures of this book about a most complicated and multi-layered region, it did frame the way I read many of his stories for better or worse. I applaud MacFarquhar's effort and would definitely read his next outing.