The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday By Neil MacFarquhar PublicAffairs; 387 pages

"It is a mistake to view the darker aspects of life in the Middle East as the entire spectrum and write off the rest," states MacFarquhar, a former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times. The son of an American oilworker, MacFarquhar grew up in Libya and speaks Arabic. His survey of the modern Middle East is concerned with more than just the typical tales of conflict, death and revenge so often peddled by foreign correspondents. With both an insider's affection and an outsider's perspective, he paints a richer, more subtle portrait of the region through miniprofiles of the people, groups and agencies (big and small) that influence daily Arab life--Hizballah, al-Jazeera, Saudi clerics and an influential Lebanese chef, among others. As a result, stories of the hateful, misogynist policies of the Saudi religious establishment and the dark deeds of the Jordanian secret police are more than balanced out by those of brave, modern reformers. By the book's end, MacFarquhar's hope for the region's future has become contagious.

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