PDF The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East Neil MacFarquhar 9781586488116 Books

Product details Paperback 400 pages Publisher PublicAffairs; Reprint edition (March 23, 2010) Language English ISBN-10 1586488112

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East Neil MacFarquhar 9781586488116 Books Reviews

• I've not finished reading the book, but already have bought a second copy as a birthday present for friend who enjoys it.
  At times, difficult to read, for instance, the second chapter, for people who've never visited the region, but though it
  describes situations happening several years ago, much is still appropriate. My appreciation of journalists overseas
  has increased. The style is fine, the events numerous and illustrate many differences and the difficulty to change
  habits, if not minds! A must-read book for anyone wishing to understand the world we live in, and how authority
  has been used to subjugate people who have trouble agreeing among themselves, because fear is the
  dominant emotion in daily life, showing the near-impossibilit of change.
• So many books about the Mideast show a narrow point of view, from someone who spent a few years in one or two countries. Mr. MacFarquhar's experience begins when he was a young boy living in the fenced compound of American oil workers in Libya. His life centered around swimming and sailing in the Mediterranean, with the odd (and they were often quite odd) contact with the locals.
  It was years later, while studying in California, he decided he had to return to the Mideast, and as a journalist. He traveled and lived in countries from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, and his writing makes it clear that each nation has its own unique history and personality. He introduces us to local friends he'd known over years of work and new acquaintances, royalty, dissidents, journalists, and the workers he encounters. All have their opinions and experiences.
  It isn't a powder-puff treatment; he tells of the Saudi religious police and their insane demands and power, and of another government that tired of maintaining a prison crammed with political prisoners, so they simply massacred the inmates and left the empty shell in the desert. He tells of educated, peaceful, middle-class women imprisoned and molested for the crime of driving a car. There are shocking cases here of brutality, but many more encounters with normal people going about their lives, trying to support their kids.
  There is some danger to his life of world travel, of course, and his work is interrupted by severe injury - near death, in fact - when he's run down by a bus... in New York City.
  After reading this book I gave it to my 17-year-old son; he's enjoying it. It's light enough to be interesting to an educated teenager, and will greatly balance and expand his impressions of the Mideast. Whatever he hears from his friends, teachers, or coworkers, he'll never be able to accept any claim that all Mideastern countries or all Muslims can be lumped into any common stereotype.
• 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.
• I am an American and have travelled extensively in the Middle East since 2006. I must say that The Media Relations Department book is the most illuminating treatment of what is happening and not happening in the Middle East that I have ever read. Neil's travels take him from Morocco to Iran. Along the way, he finds the potential change agents in the different countries - those who resist governmental oppression and continue to speak out for needed changes in societies burdened by autocratic regimes. Neil interviews these heroes for human dignity and allows the reader to understand the human dimension of the current dramas in Middle Eastern countries.
  
  Neil's explanations about the 1967 Israeli victory in the Six-Day War as being the start of Muslim fundamentalism's rise throughout the Middle East is very useful for understanding how things moved to where they are now in most Middle Eastern countries. Neil's explanation of how the mukhabarat - the security services - in Middle Eastern countries have taken on unprecedented power in each country for defending the status quo is extremely valuable. Neil provides numerous encounters with these security services. As a result, I now feel that I have gained an awareness for a dimension of life in Middle Eastern countries that I did not have when I was a tourist or occasional sojourner in the Middle East. I now better appreciate what citizens of Middle Eastern countries must think about on an ongoing basis - whether one's actions or words will prompt an "invitation" to come speak with the mukhabarat.
  
  The book moves fast and includes humorous episodes (in the midst of daunting circumstances). I would recommend this book highly to those who are just beginning a relationship with the Middle East, those that want to know if there is hope for the Middle East, and those who have years of direct experience with the Middle East. The scope of Neil's coverage would help any veteran of the Middle East know about what is happening across the thousands of miles of this region.