Baghdad without a Map and other Misadventures in Arabia

By Tony Horwitz

When Tony Horwitz was just starting out as a writer and reporter he went to the Middle East because he hoped he would find lots of stories to write and sell and thus earn a living. He did that but he also learned a lot in the process. And at times he hated being there yet he also found himself drawn back again and again.
Based in Egypt, Tony traveled to various places in the Middle East, observing, writing, selling stories, reporting on news-worthy events. His travels took him to Yemen where he chewed qat and drank soda pop with Yemeni men; to the Persian Gulf where shipping was being fired on by both Iran and Iraq to take a ride on a boat through the danger zone; to Baghdad where the tyrant ruled; to the Iran-Iraq war front with other reporters to view the progress of the war; to Israel, where he said he was treated the most rudely of any Middle Eastern country; to Libya to investigate Qaddafi's pharmaceutical factory that the West said was a weapons factory; to Khartoum, one of the most depressing places on Earth & to the refugee camps of Southern Sudan where the native Dinka were being driven to destruction by their Arab neighbors; to Beruit where the boat he was riding in narrowly missed being sunk a mortar shell; and to Tehran to witness the Ayatollah's funeral where he discovered that despite the Ayatollah's oppressive religious regime that has deprived people of the most basic human liberties, that the religious tyrant was a greatly beloved hero and saint to his people. The Middle East, a land of contradictions and confusion, of intemperance, intolerance, desperation and hatred.

I really enjoyed this book. After reading it, any thought or wish I ever might have had to visit anywhere in that region of the world have completely vanished. Portrayed in this book it is a dangerous place where people live by ancient, outlandish rules, and where breaking those stupid rules can result in death. Or if they are not oppressed with their ancient, male-dominated religion, they are oppressed by the tyrants they choose to rule over them and oftentimes they are oppressed by both religion and tyrants. This book certainly paints a vivid and frightening picture of life in the Middle East. Reading about it is a lot nicer than going there, it seems.

Confederates in the Attic

By Tony Horwitz

About 150 years ago, the United States fought a war over whether states had the right to continue practices that had been outlawed by the Federal government and the right they wanted to continue to practice was the enslavement of their fellow human beings. (Never mind the irony of a society that claimed to be Christian and yet ignored the Golden Rule.)They lost that war and the right they fought and died for to keep people in bondage. Surprisingly, they are still bitter about that. You'd think any decent person would be glad that slavery was ended because it was a foul blot on American history. But NO! The South is still pissed!
This is what Tony Horwitz discovered on his odyssey through the south tracing the progress of that old war by visiting battlefields, partaking in battle reenactments, and just plain talking to folks about the subject. It's a fascinating journey, full of local color and surprising and often disturbing details. One such detail: the Civil War isn't taught much in many parts of the South, the history classes pretty much concentrate on US history dating from 1877 and on. Which explains a lot if you have ever watched Jay Leno's Jaywalking where young people can't even tell him who George Washington was.
Bottom line, many in the South are still wallowing in the past, and like those nutty people in Europe who are still upset about things that happened 500 years ago, they are bound and determined to hang on to their grievances.

Over all, this was a very interesting book and I enjoyed it a lot. There were a few parts that kind of dragged, but mostly it was a pleasure to read and certainly very informative, especially the parts about those people who like to dress up like soldiers and pretend to refight the old battles. I never realized the degree to which they go to get the details just so. I was also surprised to find out how angry Southerners still are about the Civil War and how they still feel put down by the North and how they still tend to blame the North for their problems. That was rather shocking and disturbing. Also disturbing to read about was the race hatred that still exists in many places in the South. This book is a revelation.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

By Tony Horwitz

What a wonderful book! Horwitz takes the reader down the little explored avenues of American history, mingling the past and the present in a very intimate and informative way, yet keeping the pace lively and entertaining without bogging the reader down in a dry recitation of boring dates and facts. He makes history personal and living as he travels around gaining a new vision and understanding of the underpinnings of American history and in the process exploding lots of our most dearly held myths. These myths include the first Thanksgiving, the landing at Plymouth Rock, Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of youth, and Columbus proving the world was round. All false, as false as George Washington chopping down that silly cherry tree and all came to exist in pretty much the same way as the cherry tree story. Some old guys decided that that was the way it should be and so it was, never mind the truth. As Horwitz discovers, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Spanish settlers in Florida; the Pilgrims didn't land at Plymouth Rock, they landed on the beach, Ponce de Leon was not looking for the fountain of youth, that was completely fabricated by later historians, and Columbus and the Catholic Church already knew the world was not flat but round. Still, at the end of the book, Horwitz acknowledges that people need their myths and that myths will outlast the truth every time.

You know you are reading a terrific book (a history book more than 400 pages long) when you can't put the book down and end up reading it in just a few days. Such was the case with Horwitz's engaging history of early American explorers, A Voyage Long and Strange. I had a lot of fun reading this book and it is definitely "a keeper".
The only thing I didn't enjoy was reading of the slaughter of the innocents and the brutality of the Europeans against the native peoples. That was really painful and hard to read about and it made me very sad that American history is built on piles of dead and exploited peoples, native and African. That part was tough to read about yet totally worth it. You don't really know history if you don't know the ugly parts too.

For a review see NPR, which also has an excerpt from the book.

New Words
Yoiking: Yoik, Joik or juoiggus is a traditional Sami (Lapp) form of song. "The show opened with a woman yoiking, then segued to an interview with a Swedish Jew."
Prelapsarian: Of, or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve. "This prelapsarian image helped give rise to the myth of the Noble Savage, which would endure in the Western imagination for centuries."
Cumber: The act of slowing down or hindering. "They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize." (A quote from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary)
Exurb: A residential area beyond the suburbs. "St. Augustine today is almost an exurb of Jacksonville, with a population one one-hundredth the size of the sprawling metropolis."
Lacuna: A blank gap or missing part. See also lacunae. "For Gannon, though, the controversy sparked by his remarks spoke to a more consequential lacuna in our memory of early America."
Cosmography: The creation of maps of the universe; the study of the size and geometry of the universe and changes in those with cosmic time. "Typical was Richard Hore, a leather seller and dabbler in cosmography who sailed in 1536 with thirty gentlemen 'desirous to see the strange things of the world.'"
Pickery: Petty theft. "But she [Elizabeth I] quietly abetted the looting of Spanish treasure by seamen on 'journeys of pickery.'"