Rating: 
Summary: Bagdad Without a Map
Review: I first heard of this book in a review in the Wall Street Journal (author used to write for them). Every chapter is a short story, funny and factual; His story about Yemen was so accurate as verified in the most recent National Geographic article. I have read it several times and laugh each time; I am now reading his trek across Australia. You will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Accurate & Funny
Review: I read this book shortly after returning from Egypt. Horowitz is quite possibly the bravest (or dumbest) author I have ever read. His stories about running around the middle east are told with an accuracy and honesty that is offset nicely by his sense of humor and wit. The Arabian Flights chapter is my personal favorite. Especially if you have ever been to an airport in the middle east. Even though his account is about 10 years old it has retained a relevance that can still be appreciated today.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating observations
Review: It's been awhile since I read this, but I can tell you it's a wonderful story. His comments are wonderful and his interactions with the people he meets are funny, sad, annoying, etc. Just a wonderful story.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, and a bit off kilter.
Review: Its Tony K. Nuff said. His writing style hadn't quite matured in this book, which pre-dates his incredibly wonderful Confederates in the Attic, which if you don't have you should immediately buy, right here on Amazon.com.But,this is a really funny, and fun to read book. He has some really cool adventures in the middle east, and his style of reporting/writing is very conversational, and easy to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not A Good Place To Start
Review: Mostly pedestrian account of a freelance journalist's travels across the Middle East, which at times borders on simply perpetuating typical American stereotypes of the area. There are, however, some nuggets of interest to be found, among the better chapters are those on Yemen and Sudan. Also excellent are his first-hand accounts of traveling with smugglers in the Persian Gulf and from Cyprus to Beirut. Not recommended for beginners, but worth skimming if you already have some context on the region.
Rating:
Summary: Freelancing without a resume
Review: So what does a young would-be journalist do after a dozen rejections from newspaper editors? Become a stringer. That is, jump-shoot his resume into the newsroom trashcan, and book passage to Cairo. And here his story begins... This jaunt through the Arab world wasn't particularly newsworthy, but the dispatches do make interesting travel reading. He records stories of native family life, dissipated expatriates, sleek young westernized Arabs, and so forth. He bumps his consciousness painfully against the intractable Arab/Israeli conflict, and goes for an all-night boatride with Indian smugglers out of Dubai. There's a wrenching visit to wretched south Sudanese refugees, and to the no less wretched capital of their oppressors, Khartoum. And he spotlights some scummy colleagues, photojournalists bouncing along in a jeep on a battlefield of the Iran-Iraq war, complaining about the lack of photogenic carnage. The book ends during Desert Shield, which is a shame, but he had to wind it up somewhere, I suppose. All he can do is end on a hopeful note, hoping that Iraq's liberation will not be far off. Footnote: Horwitz makes a cameo appearance in the late Michael Kelly's book about Desert Storm, _Martyr's Day_.
Rating:
Summary: Freelancing without a resume
Review: So what does a young would-be journalist do after a dozen rejections from newspaper editors? Become a stringer. That is, jump-shoot his resume into the newsroom trashcan, and book passage to Cairo. And here his story begins... This jaunt through the Arab world wasn't particularly newsworthy, but the dispatches do make interesting travel reading. He records stories of native family life, dissipated expatriates, sleek young westernized Arabs, and so forth. He bumps his consciousness painfully against the intractable Arab/Israeli conflict, and goes for an all-night boatride with Indian smugglers out of Dubai. There's a wrenching visit to wretched south Sudanese refugees, and to the no less wretched capital of their oppressors, Khartoum. And he spotlights some scummy colleagues, photojournalists bouncing along in a jeep on a battlefield of the Iran-Iraq war, complaining about the lack of photogenic carnage. The book ends during Desert Shield, which is a shame, but he had to wind it up somewhere, I suppose. All he can do is end on a hopeful note, hoping that Iraq's liberation will not be far off. Footnote: Horwitz makes a cameo appearance in the late Michael Kelly's book about Desert Storm, _Martyr's Day_.
Rating:
Summary: funny/frightening
Review: Some men follow their dreams, some their instincts, some the beat of a private drummer. I had a habit of following my wife.
-Tony Horwitz, Baghdad Without a Map Tony Horwitz has a pretty good shtick going; he follows his journalist wife (Geraldine Brooks) from assignment to assignment, across
the globe, and then wangles freelance assignments in the new locale. In the meantime, he's produced three excellent books set in these
widely varied ports of call : One for the Road relates his adventures hitchhiking through the Australian Outback; Confederates in the
Attic is a very amusing account of Civil War reenactors in the American South; and Baghdad Without a Map takes him through the
Middle East in the year or so just prior to the 1991 Gulf War. At a time when all of us are scurrying around trying to figure out what makes the Arab world so much different than the West, Horwitz
is an excellent guide. Whether listening to Egyptians denigrate Gulf Arabs ("The Gulfies had oil but they didn't have a civilization to
rival that of Egyptians, who were tossing up pyramids five thousand years before the Gulfies moved out of goat-hair tents"); getting
whacked on qat, the narcotic leaf that is the national passion of Yemen; or describing the oppressive atmosphere of Iraq--he compares
entering Iraq to "walking through the gate of a maximum-security prison"--Horwitz always manages to both make us laugh and scare the
bejeezus out of us. His portrait of the region is one of unrelenting paranoia on the part of the Islamic world. The title of the book refers
to the fact that no maps are available in Iraq, because Saddam is afraid to share such basic geographic information with potential
enemies (which, of course, includes everyone), and, if that's not enough, even the weather there is classified information. All of this though is mere prelude to the fascinating, but frightening, closing section of the book, in which Mr. Horwitz and his wife
travel to Iran to attend the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeni, along with what may well, as he suggests, have been the largest crowd of
people ever assembled in human history. This event turned deadly, with literally millions of crazed mourners crushing each other, then
devolved into bizarre spectacle, with the faithful tearing apart the dead imam's corpse. But even here, with religious frenzy at its worst,
Mr. Horwitz offers this nearly surreal exchange : One of the demonstrators peeled off to rest by the curb, and I edged over to ask him what the mourners were shouting. 'Death to America,' he said. 'Oh.' I reached for my notebook as self-protection and scribbled the Farsi transliteration : Margbar Omrika. 'You are American?' he asked. 'Yes. A journalist.' I braced myself for a diatribe against the West and its arrogant trumpets. 'I must ask you something,' the man said. 'Have you ever been to Disneyland?' 'As a kid, yes.' The man nodded, thoughtfully stroking his beard. 'My brother lives in California and has written me about Disneyland,' he
continued. 'It has always been my dream to go there and take my children on the tea-cup ride.' With that, he rejoined the marchers, raised his fist and yelled 'Death to America!' again. This kind of great good humor and a genuine affection for the people he meets characterize Mr. Horwitz's writing throughout. But, the
overwhelming sense that he leaves the reader with is that Islam and its adherents face a wrenching restructuring of their closed, corrupt,
and sectarian societies, as they confront a modern world (whose defining features are freedom, pluralism, and openness) for which they
are utterly unprepared. GRADE : A
Rating:
Summary: Very funny and informative, must read
Review: The book is like a good meal, you have to finish and burp!!!!!Mr. Horwitz made me look crazy with occassional burst of laughter in the subway. His simple yet very funny minute description of people and places is like a lively detailed photograph. He notes little things that an ordinary traveler overlooks. You don't need to have a great sense of humour to enjoy the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read Primer of the Middle East
Review: This book is written in a very journalistic manner which makes it an easy enjoyable read. Mr. Horwitz reports to us about places most of us would never see, but are in the news frequently. This book covers his trips to the Middle East and his observations about life in those countries. Much of the text comes from his interviewing the local citizenry. His style of writing is reporting with an uncanny comprehension of the tragic hillarity of daily existence in these countries.Whom among us is familiar with the narcotic shrub Qat and its effect on Yemeni society? This is one of the many topics covered. I was hooked by his writing style when he described "littering as a form of philanthropy" in Egypt. After reading this I asked myself what are we hoping to accomplish in the Middle East, and is it an obtainable objective.
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