American Taliban will have its first book club discussion on September 8th. It is also on the syllabi for courses in Philosophy & Religion, as well as a class on Terrorism Studies at the Robertson School of Government.
Entertaining our troops with thrillers strikes me as too much of the same reality show. Read More.
Review Excerpt: Whatever your political, spiritual, or philosophical stance, this is a book well worth reading and elements of it will haunt your dreams for years. Read More.
Hallelujah! The Philadelphia Inquirer’s reviewer gets the ending.
Excerpt: That’s one of the most interesting questions American Taliban raises: Can parents rear their children in all the right ways for the lives they imagine for the children, and yet leave them unprepared when the path veers unpredictably? READ MORE.
For reviewers who question the homosexuality in American Taliban, here’s a Terrorism Specialist’s version:
“Her researches have taught her that there is no common denominator in determining why people become terrorists, but she has identified a checklist of risk factors. These include alienation, coming from a society with a youthful population bulge or a high male-to-female ratio and, for the people who wind up being used as cannon fodder by the terrorists, poverty. To the list she would now add sexual humiliation, and in January she published an article in Foreign Affairs in which she pointed out that sexual abuse of boys in the Islamic religious schools known as madrasas is not uncommon, and neither is the rape of boys in Afghanistan, especially on Thursday, known as “man-loving day,” because Friday prayers are thought to absolve a sinner of all his guilt.” Read More.
Excerpt: “The U.S. government has made a political decision on how they’ve responded — to the arrest, the trial and the verdict,” Ginsberg said. “I think it’s easier for them to be silent — to show they are not trying to overreach in a foreign country. In the meantime, there are allegations of fabricated evidence and torture, yet you hear no public statements by the U.S. government.” READ MORE
Andre Aciman (Eight White Nights) and I will read at Scribblers on the Roof (their eleventh summer reading season) on June 21st.
Location: Rooftop of Ansche Chesed, under the stars
251 W. 100th Street (betw. West End Ave. & B’way)
Time: 8-10 p.m.
Rain (there’s a sheltered space too) or Shine.
From the Chicago Tribune Review: After all, when someone shape- shifts from all-American surfer dude to a trainee in camps designed for “the making of a Muslim foot soldier,” which is what occurs in “American Taliban,” there should be an accounting that feels like something other than pure fiction. Read on.
LIsten to me on The BookShow with Joe Donahue WAMC: The Book Show #1141 – Pearl Abraham (2010-06-01).
Set on the eve of 9/11, the book pulls us into the troubled consciousness of 18-year-old John Jude Parish, a Beltway brat who would seem on the surface an unlikely combatant, enemy or other. Read more.
