Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War

Megan K. Stack

Language: English

ISBN

21st Century Afghan War (2001-) Americans Americans - Middle East Anthropology Biography & Autobiography Cultural Editors; Journalists; Publishers General History Iraq War (2003-) Journalism Language Arts & Disciplines Middle East Middle East - Description and Travel Middle East - History; Military - 21st Century Middle East - Social conditions - 21st century Military Political Freedom & Security Political Science Social Science Sociology Stack; Megan K - Travel - Middle East Terrorism Terrorism - Middle East - History - 21st century Travel War and Society - Middle East War and society War on Terrorism; 2001 War on Terrorism; 2001-2009 Women Women war correspondents Women war correspondents - United States

Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.

Published: Jun 15, 2010

Description:

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:

An American reporter takes in one Middle East cataclysm after another in this searing memoir. Los Angeles Times correspondent Stack covered the war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, then bounced around to other hot-spot postings, including Israel during the second Intifada, occupied Baghdad, and southern Lebanon during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Stack offers gripping accounts of the sorrows of war, especially of the traumas Afghan and Lebanese civilians endured under American and Israeli bombing, but she also writes evocatively of quieter pathologies: Libya's jovially sinister totalitarian regime, corruption under Egypt's quasi-dictatorship, and lyric anti-Semitism at a Yemeni poetry slam. Dropping journalistic detachment in favor of a novelistic style, she enters the story as a protagonist whose travails—fending off a lecherous Afghan warlord, seething under the humiliating restrictions of Saudi Arabia's gender apartheid system—illuminate the societies she encounters. The big-picture lessons Stack draws—The Middle East goes crazy and we go along with it—are none too cogent, but her vivid, atmospheric prose and keen empathy make her a superb observer of the region's horrific particulars.