Rating: 
Summary: Racist or what?
Review: This is an excellent though rambling at times, read for those wondering what the rest of the world thinks about 9-11. I found myself agreeing with the author most of the time...
Oriana's politics are conservative and she'd be a keynote speaker at the John Birch Society! Its the first time I've read a politic expression [current] and have learnt alot about my own ideas. Her 'little' book may seem extreme to most, but then I suspect they think, America deserved what it got.
Rating: 
Summary: brutal
Review: Imagine if you had a neighbor with a huge wart. Good manners decries that you ignore it. Ms. Fallaci doesn't. In Rage and Pride she points out that there is a wart on the neighbor's face and proceeds to describe how big and ugly is and notes that it's growing. In other words this fire breathing little book is not polite much less politically correct. Is Ms. Fallaci a latter day Cassandra speaking the truth to unwilling listeners? You'll have to decide for yourself. All I can say is that this is a volcanic little book. I couldn't stop reading it until I came to the last page.
Rating:
Summary: passionate and honest
Review: This is a very personal reaction to the bombing of the World Trade Towers by a gifted Italian journalist who has been to all the war zones from Vietnam to Lebanon, and has also interviewed some of the major players in the Islamist terror war against the west. It is extremely outspoken - refreshing and thought provoking. Not for the politically correct.
Rating:
Summary: Ms Fallaci has warned us....
Review: Although it is at times harsh and harsh in a personal way, as she knows many of the players that she praises or excoriates, this is a brilliant rant that warns those of us who love our secular or religious freedom of the imminent danger of radical Islam. Ms Fallaci has never been shy about how she feels and why. She is absolutely lucid in her defense of the west and her attack on the "Islamists", who seek to destroy everything that does not conform to their poisonous, cancerous vision. At times, she come a little too close in condemning all Muslims, which is unfair, in my opinion. She is merely telling the reader what she has seen with her own eyes coming from the extremist Muslim regimes of Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. and it's very ugly, and pretty darn hopeless. She condemns Muslim women who allow themselves to be subjugated and abused by the men who have twisted the Koran, and dimsmisses them with great contempt. She says that the Islmaic middle east has contributed almost nothing to humanity since it's glory days in the 12th century. The one problem I have with her book is that she observes and condemns, with justification, yes, but does not offer a vision or solution, like Thomas Friedmann does in "Longitudes and Attitudes".
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I've always been a big fan of Oriana Fallaci, but this book disappoints. The jacket blurb promised that we would get a defense of Western culture and a discussion of "the uncomfortable truths that all of us know but never dare to express." In fact, the book reads like a somewhat incoherent screed against all things Muslim, and does little to defend Western culture other than listing various accomplishments of Western culture. The book promises so much more than it is able to deliver, and it reveals its author as a person who has perhaps become somewhat fond of ugly stereotypes in her old age (all Albanians are involved in drugs, according to Ms. Fallaci, although she neglects to mention that Westerners are buying and using most of these drugs). You cannot call her a racist, however, because the author herself says that calling someone "racist" is just a means of failing to confront "uncomfortable truths." While Ms. Fallaci does have valid points about the inability of Italy to absorb large numbers of immigrants, and the inability of Italians and others to confront the bad things about other people's cultures, as a reader I was left thinking, "Is this it? With all the build up that led me to read this book, is that all that Oriana Fallaci has to say?" The short version of her message is that Islamic cultures are bad, the Western world is at war with Islam, and that we need to wake up and stop letting Islamic immigrants into our countries, particularly if they are going to have lots of babies. But it does not follow from her arguments that all Muslims and all immigrants are bad, which Ms. Fallaci seems to imply. I close with an illustrative quote from her book, a quote which is no doubt one of the "vehement invectives" promised on the dust jacket: "In my opinion there is something in his brothers of faith [i.e., Muslims] which repels the women of good taste."). This quote is typical of what you find in the book, and in the end, it is not that thought provoking, and often a bit annoying. If you want to read her book, wait until it gets remaindered, because it is not worth the ... cover price.
Rating: 
Summary: acid polemic, charming memoire, and EVER provocative
Review: Fallaci has the reputation of an irascible moral purist, a radical democrat, and she certainly lives up to that here. This book, written in response immediately following the 9/11 attacks, demonstrates that she has lost none of her political passion. It is as if she vomitted it all out in a single sitting, which is not too far off the mark as she says she lived on coffee and didn't sleep for weeks while she wrote. On the one hand, there is her outrage at what occured, not only with the Muslim world that spawned such dangerous fundamentalists, but also at the reactions of the politicians in the West and in particular in Europe. All I can say is that her condemnations are not terribly nuanced: there is no acknowledgment of moderate moslems and no patience with the all-too-human hypocracy of the "critics" of the US. While this is rather tiresome after a while, it should not overshadow the fact that her perspective and experience as a celebrated journalist are indeed unique and penetrating. But her rhetoric all too easily soars to excess. In a diatribe against colored immigrants in Italy, for example, she flatly charges that they don't work much, that they routinely indulge in sexual assault, and that they cannot be absorbed into Italian civilization but will instead destroy it. That is certainly not racist, but there is real bile there. On the other hand, she gives some wonderful glimpses into her mind and its development, from the moral integrity of her parents to her meetings with such world leaders as the Dalai Lama (he gets an A+) or Yassar Arafat (D-). In a way, I wish that she would write a memoir. Also, she lets on that she has terminal cancer, that she loves New York, that America is the guarantor of the West's freedom. It is a good performance and highly interesting. I read this in Italian and really enjoyed the language: vivid and full of bite, very useful for the development of vocabulary. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Seth Frantzman's review
Review: There is a reader and reviewer here named SETH FRANTZMAN. He claims Muslims have "wiped out" Sikhs in Punjab. This is inaccurate. Sikhs are very much a part of the state of Punjab in India. They are not "wiped out"! yes, brutal atrocities were performed against Sikhs and Hindus in punjab and others states which are near of the border of India and Pakistan,before partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, they WERE killed, a lot of them but many Muslims were "wiped out" too, though not all. However to say "Sikhs" have been "wiped out" is utter rubbish! Please don't create conflicts between Indians, Seth Frantzman. Muslims are not the ones to start the conflict and neither were Sikhs or Hindus. It is more complicated than that.
In India, people of different religions have been living together for centuries. Not like your Israel Seth Frantzman! In fact Hyderabad a major city in India consists of both Hindus AND Muslims, Muslims being in the slight majority and they have coexisted peacfully for centuries without any uproars, riots or killings. Seth Frantzman's review of this book the Rage and the Pride is considered one of the most helpful.Please read his other reviews to see what his agenda is.Mr. Frantzman, in one of his other reviews has also called the person who murdered Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, a HERO! He has called a cowardly murderer and ASSASIN a HERO. See Mr. Frantzman's review of a book written by this killer of Gandhi , for evidence. It is in Frantzman's reviews.Please do not think Mr. Frantzman is at all helpful he is anything but!
Rating:
Summary: A heartfelt essay, but also a hateful diatribe
Review: I came across this book by accident while browsing the net and read an online version that was available. Not sure if that is the full version, but I read enough to come to a conclusion. This authour might be a well travelled journalist and may have seen a lot of things, but she is very very ignorant AND prejudiced. There is no doubt about it. I have to say, judging by the amount of people who have given this book 5, 4 or even 3 stars, there must be a lot of people who think like her and that is quite scary. To be fair I would not give it zero stars even if there was an option, because I think every literary expression does deserve some recognition, after all this is her opinion. However this is proof there will always be people in this world who have had experiences and perspectives that will completely cloud their judgment about people different from themsleves.
She claims that Western culture is far superior to Islamic culture, but completely eliminates the fact that so many things have been borrowed from the Islamic world. We would not be so far in technology today without mathematics and any learned person knows maths comes from the Arab and Hindu world-NOT from the west. The area which is now the Middle east was once the cradle of civilization. In fact many aspects of romance and chivalry were learned from the Islamic world by the Europeans during the Crusades. Need I remind Ms. Fallaci that while western civilization is advanced, it has plundered numerous nations through wars and colonization.
She calls Muslims "Sons of Allah" repeatedly, she is so ignorant to say such a thing, as some other reader said here, Allah is simply the Arabic word for God and Muslims do not believe God has offspring and perhaps she knows this and is just insulting Muslims further with this degrading term. She barely mentions Muslim women , she talks about Muslims as if they are some wild, barbaric male mass, which goes to show her ignorance the knowledge of strong Muslim women. Women like Prophet Mohammed's wife Khatija, who was a successful businesswoman, Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, the former President of Turkey. Then there are other figures like Queen Noor of Jordan, Princess Rania, also of Jordan. How many Western nations have had a female leader, aside from England?
Yes the state of affairs is very bad after the 911 trajedy, yes it is abhorrent and horrible that some are happy about the tragedy and yes, to the world it may look like "Islam" is a barbaric religion, but how much do people know about Islam. This book can also be seen a wake up call to many so called Muslims who are following a complelety different form of Islam than what Prophet Mohammed and his family practiced. This is what people think our religion and is now.It would be as ludricous someone saying all Christians are like the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, of like the child molesting Priests instead of being like how Jesus was.
Still, Ms. Fallacis is so ignorant that she even called Afghanistan an Arab country. This woman is a journalist? She does not even know the difference between Muslim and Arab. Muslim is a religion. Arabs are an ethnicity. Afghans are not Arabs. She talks about Muslims "breeding like rats".
One thing to point out is that Oriana Fallaci is a very fearful and scared person. She is an athiest, and I believe she is fearful of any religion, particularly one she was not raised in gaining strength in the world. Islam is only a close second to Christianity in terms of number of followers. She is a godless person, who is swayed by the material world. All people of any religion, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims and any others I have left out, even those that do not have a religion but believe in God, or are agnostic, they must be careful of such people. They are the ones that cause destruction in the world and wars, they are the root of it all. I am not saying I hate atheists, but anyone who is so devoid of any idea of God, must not have any love. I am a strong Muslim woman and am not afraid of the likes of an Oriana Fallaci. She is a bitter, old,hateful, ignorant AND PREJUDICED woman.
Rating:
Summary: The fundamentalist jihad against the West
Review: This work is a diatribe against radical fundamentalist Islam, and the Jihad many of its advocates have proclaimed and are attenmpting against the West. The great opening blow of that Jihad the evil attacks on the world- trade center towers and the murder of two- thousand Americans are the trigger for her rage. She rightly understand that there is something terribly wrong with a great part of Islam today, and that it has chosen Western culture and most especially the United States as its major enemy.
She is also right in censoring those European appeasers who criticize the United States for doing their dirty work for them and contending with the myriad problems created by radical Islam , whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Madrid, New York, or numerous other places around the globe.
Her cause is just and her anger is justified but she is somewhat indiscriminate in defining her targets. A number of experts on Islam have said that perhaps twenty percent of the world's Islamic population supports the goals and aims of Jihad. This is a huge number over two- hundred million. But it also means that eight- hundred million do not apparently advocate violence against the West. When one talks about Islam one should have an awareness of the need to try and rally those forces within Islam itself which might oppose the fundamentalists. Whether this is a realistic goal I do not know . But it seems to me it should not be dismissed out of hand. It also seems to me that Fallaci makes a mistake in gratuitously insulting great masses. The better way and she often takes the better way in this book is to give specific examples of how radical Islam has led to the murder of innocents, the violent exploitation and suppression of women, outright barbarity in relation to other peoples and cultures.
In short I think the major message of this book is right and it is presented with a great deal of emotional force. I think it should however have been qualified and refined, with a real effort made to avoid gratuitous insult and humiliation of others.
One more point and for me a major one in Fallaci's favor. As one who once was more sympathetic to the Arab cause than to Israel her meetings with Arafat and acquaintance with Palestinian Arab society led her to move to strong support of Israel. In the game of propaganda played in the world there is no people in recent times that have used lies and slander more successfully than the Palestinian Arabs. Whether as airplane hijackers or suicide terrorists, they have been in the first rank of those advocating and practicing terror. Fallaci 's frank condemnation of their violence is for me one of the major good points of the book. It leads to another. This book is an effort to rally the democratic forces of the West to defend themselves against the assault now being made against Radical Islam. I believe that there is such a struggle going on now, and that she is right to define it this way and to urge that the free world understand this, and act in self- defense appropriately.
Rating:
Summary: Her pride exceeds her rage
Review: Oriana Fallaci was a jet set celebrity journalist of the 1960s and 1970s best known for her interviews In the US she was often compared with Barbara Walters but whereas Barbara Walters just tried to get people to cry, Fallaci tried always to push peoples buttons. Of course being European Fallaci always had to maintain pretentions of intellect, but basically she always was a egomaniacal, grandstanding, publicity seeking media [...], perhaps the first of the TV era.
Being a Euro-Trash pseudo-intellectual in the 1960s and 1970s one had to be fashionably left-wing, fashionably anti-american, fashionably anti-israel, and fashionably anti-religion. Oriana happily obliged but her heart was never quite in it. She claimed "sympathies" with anarchism, but always was a bit of a camp follower. She made fun of American provincialism, but still praised NASA to the skies in her book IF THE SUN DIES. She was critical of Israel but was strongly sympathetic to Golda Meir and strongly antagonistic toward Yassir Arafat in her book INTERVIEW WITH HISTORY. In her interview with PLAYBOY she admitted her personal liking of Meir and made slanderous, unsubstantiated claims regarding Arafats sexuality--which then segued into some homophobic statement--which she then tried to convice the interviewer not to print...because it would damage her credibility and play into the hands of the right-wing. (Ah, it's never easy when the shoe's on the other foot is it Oriana?)
After a long hiatus following the flop of her memior of her affair with a Greek would be assasin, the mask is final well off. Oriana wants war! War against Islam! Not just Islamism mind you but Islam itself! Y'see some things never change and her phony leftism aside it seems the hatred of religion, all religion, still remains, perhaps the only constant heartfelt conviction she has about anything besides herself (remember this is her world we just live in it). The fact that about 20% of the world's population are muslim and worse still actually seem to believe it! (unlike western style cafeteria Catholics etc.) is more than she can bear. Christopher Hitchens seems to have made a similar pilgrimage but he lacks her gift of abuse.
While this book has caused a lot of controversy in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, it hasn't sold all that well in the US. It's easy to see why. Ann Coulter has already corner that market and invective like humor just doesn't translate. Still she's been lionize by neo-con entities like FrontPage and the National Review. The one-time "critic of Israel" now proudly declares that she's "standing with Israel." A recent article described her as saying her "life was in danger."
Well that's the wonderful thing about paranoia, you're always the center of attention.
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