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Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming Of Age Between The Arabs & Israelis 1956-78 (2010)

by Kai Bird(Favorite Author)

4.09 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1416544402 (ISBN13: 9781416544401)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Scribner Book Company

review 1: Loved it! Kai Bird is a journalist and biographer who grew up in the Middle East—Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia, Egypt— his father part of the American diplomatic corps. This is an excellent history of the modern Middle East told through Bird’s experience, and the most accessible intro that I can recall since Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem. Partisans of the Israeli-Arab conflict will profit from details of his father’s diplomatic encounters with Arab nationalists, intellectuals, Israelis and oil sheiks. They lived for a time in an American oil-business enclave, by the American consulate in E. Jerusalem under the Jordanians, and in an upscale multicultural neighborhood in Cairo. There are strong chapters on Nasser’s Egypt and an insider’s take on the hijacking y... moreears of the PLO. The memoir is also an account of his Jewish wife’s family who survived Nazi Europe through chance and cunning. Finally, Bird tells the story of Peter Bergson, IMHO one of the great unsung heroes of the 20th century.
review 2: I think this is an honest, open and heartfelt memoir done by the author on his life. I liked the way he presented his thoughts, the history and the story of his life. I found this to be a very good read as it presented new thoughts and insights, for me, about the Middle East. It was also very interesting to read how he's thinking changed over the years, yet never really changed at heart. It shows me how knowledge is power to the individual. less

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