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Summary: An evening with Oriana Fallaci
Review: The book has the dense, lyrical texture of an evening's talk at a table: the emotion, the opinion, the recollections, pulling in other strands of autobiography that characterize the best personal essays. Think of a time when you listened to a companion in a restaurant, long past the impatience of the waiter, who was weaving a tapestry of reaction to something. That is what Fallaci offers. Brilliantly, passionately, she describes the preludes and the dangers that led to September 11th, the false equivalents of postmodern discourse, the ignorant intolerance of the Imams that created disaster. You have to read this. Really.
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Summary: I cried for one night.
Review: It's a perfect and shaking prediction.
Please act on it
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Summary: great on the concepts, poor in the presentation
Review: Fallaci has the courage to say what too many are thinking, but are afraid of saying. Her personal first hand knowledge of Muslims in their own part of the world, and her direct observation of the effects Arab immigration have wrought on her native country (filthy cities, a rise in crime), needed only 9/11 as a catalyst to coalesce into a book like this one.In the book she tells what many of us in the Western world deep down know but still refuse to accept: that Islam is at war with the West. Most of Islam, not just a few fanatics; and most of the West, not just America. Fallaci makes one mistake in the version of the book for sale in America, and that is insisting on translating it from her native Italian herself. The English is by and large correct, but the syntax is Italian and the result comes out stilted, a bit hysterical and weird sounding. This detracts significantly from the impact of this work. But overall, it should be required reading.
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Summary: Admiration from an American in Italy
Review: What Ms. Fallaci has written here is to be read and re-read by everyone.This book is not the sensationalism or empty headed wishful thinking that is circulating today. What is written here merits not a silly Nobel but the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I would love to meet this incredible woman! Long live Oriana!
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Summary: The Forest and the Trees
Review: ...To me Fallaci's article was simultaneously a slap in the face and a shot in the arm. Here was the most independent-minded journalist of Italy-of Europe, probably-a woman who had spent 30 years travelling the world and witnessing American interventions first hand, from Vietnam to the Gulf War, who had confronted and conversed with the most important leaders of not only the Western but the Arab and Muslim world, who had grilled Kissinger and William Colby as well as Khomeni and Bhutto. Who had spent more than her fair share of her time documenting and criticizing harshly the blunders and tragedies of U.S. foreign policy, and who shared (still does) much of the condescending European appraisal of American culture. And what was she saying? That we agonizers were all missing the forest for the trees. That there are times when you have to stand back and look at fundamental values and have the courage to say, "Yes, I know that we are not perfect, but the basic values we stand for are good and worth defending. And those who have attacked us, whatever legitimate grievances they sometimes use to advance their cause, have declared war on those values. They hate us, not for our faults, but for our virtues-our personal liberties, our treatment of women, our material achievements. And we have to decide whether to defend those virtues or not, because if we don't we stand to lose them." She was saying that when patriotism means spontaneous banding together in shared love and defense of basic values, it is the noblest of impulses, and those who sneer at it exhibit pettiness rather than superiority.
Much has been made and will be made of Fallaci's attack on Muslims. It is true that she generalizes and does not draw distinctions that we, as Americans, must draw. Because we have Muslims as friends and fellow citizens, and because many (most, I hope) of the Muslims who choose to make their home in this country share our basic values. But again, we must not miss the forest for the trees. Much of the Muslim world beyond our borders (and some within them) is presently in the sway of an ideology that rejects our values and defines us as the Great Satan. The most prominent spokesmen of Islam in the world regard 9/11 as a laudable and just act. It may be that Islam, properly understood, is "really" a religion of peace. But the way it is being taught and understood and practiced by millions, it is an incitement to violence. If Osama Bin Laden is not the true voice of Islam, ultimately it is the Muslims who must disavow him and make their disavowal unequivocal. Until then, Fallaci is justified in taking him and his brethren at their word and judging the "sons of Allah" by the acts they espouse, by the societies they set up, by the words they use to express what they regard as the will of their God. The Muslims of whom Fallaci speaks express and act on deep hatred of the West, and Fallaci is not one to bear the hatred of others without responding in kind, viscerally and vehemently...This book is, as its title announces, a scream of rage, not a calmly reasoned policy analysis. It is a wake up call, not an agenda. We need to absorb Fallaci's rage and pride and figure out how to channel them constructively. Her message has many rough edges, but on its central thesis she is right: we must not allow our liberal virtues, our penchant for self-criticism, to acquiesce in the destruction of the culture from which they spring. Yes, the West must continue to look in the mirror at its own flaws-a mirror Fallaci has spent most of her life holding up. But there are times when you have to take sides, when you have to choose between black and white, and when it's an act of moral abdication to insist that everything is gray.
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Summary: Half the Story
Review: The author nails fundamentalist Islam but misses the bigger point. All fundamentalist religions believe their view is correct and endorsed by God and therefore tend to think themselves entitled to impose their will on others. Abortion clinic bombers and those who would deny fundamental rights to gays and lesbians are cut from the same cloth as those who think that Allah has determined the a narrow version of Islam should triumph. Falwell and Pat Robertson are not bin Laden but they would both use the state to impose their religious ideology on the rest of us. In Afghanistan people with a similar goal were called Taliban.
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Summary: Mille grazie
Review: As an American Christian living in Turkey, a (the only?) secular Muslim country, I still found that the book struck unbelievably close to my adopted "home." The part that I will always carry with me is the idea that we are under no obligation to accord boundless respect to those (i.e. Islamists) who have absolutely zero respect for us. Other reviewers express misgivings about the way Fallaci seems to paint all Muslims with the same Islamist brush, but I must say they only have themselves to blame: there seems to be no mechanism whatsoever in Islamic cultures for self-examination and self-criticism, whereas they can spin foreign conspiracy theories for their woes until the end of time. A note: I read the book in the original Italian, which is not my first language, and I still could not put it down and read it one long day. A must read.
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Summary: Blistering Wake-up Call
Review: Brutally frank and fiery, this is a loud call-to-arms for those who don't believe that Western Culture is at war with Islam/The Jihad. Unabashedly pro-American & pro-Western, Fallaci pulls no punches and even takes on the Pope as kowtowing to the Isamic world. And for those who have been to Florence and seen its public spaces despoiled by foreign sellers of junk, her section on Italian cowardice vis-à-vis illegal immigrants is a revelation. She dares to say what many people think; her intimate journalist's knowledge of Arafat and Islamic countries gives the book great weight and authority.
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Summary: A Voice For Freedom and Italy
Review: After touring Italy, Rome and Florence recently, Ms. Fallaci certainly realizes the dangerous times ahead unless peoples heed her warnings. To picture the beautiful city of Florence, with tents placed in front of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral sickens the mind. Have you seen so much 'graffiti' as you do on the buildings in the cities of Rome and Florence? Gypsies and beggars everywhere. Listen to the words of Ms. Fallaci, they are inspiring to remember our forefathers and the hardships they endured to give us this modern day freedom. Keep Italy one country; don't let outsiders destroy their unity for progress and love of arts, religion and beauty.
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Summary: Strong words from a stronger lady!
Review: This is a barest, rawest evaluation of the 9/11 attack that has been written. She says things everyone else is AFRAID to say. She is most courageous writer alive today. Hunter S. Thompson? - go buy a dress!
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