Rating: 
Summary: Baghdad Without a Map
Review: What fun! I love to read for information and for entertainment but I've seldom found a book that combines them so utterly. Of course it's not a comprehensive study of the region. Instead it really gives one the sense of having personally experienced a bit the Middle East. If I wrote travel books, this is exactly what I would be striving to produce.
Rating: 
Summary: Slightly shallow, but heaps of fun
Review: While not the ideal book for someone looking for trenchant political analysis of the Middle East, Horwitz does a great job of vividly bringing the foibles of life in the region to life. His years of meandering travels as a freelance journalist gave him a great vantage point from which to see the region. But in a post 9/11 world, it is hard to read the book without thinking about how the great gulf in cultures that makes much of the Middle East a mystery to Horwitz has altered our world. Even with that sobering thought popping up repeatedly, this book has loads of laugh out loud moments and Horwitz's language is never less than spirited. Basically, the book is a fun way to experience the Middle East without the hassles associated with actually traveling through the region.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this book...you'll see the world better.
Review: With life so short, books like this one avail us all the intimacy of fascinating experiences within remote cultures without having to travel the globe ourselves. This author's style of relating his great experiences in the Middle East is extremely charismatic. You will find it very hard to put this down short of completion. It is very revealing and highly entertaining, dispelling the myths associated with the exotic lands he's visited. He paints complete pictures without the tedium of being comprehensive, a clear gift.
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