Little America - Stylish Backpack for Travel, School & Work | Durable & Water-Resistant | Perfect for Commuters, Students & Outdoor Adventures

In this day and age, it's fairly easy to find books that, instead of actually researching the subject at hand, make do with an extremely superficial view of the proceedings. The image of Arabs especially is frequently subject to gross generalizations if not downright lies, rooted in research that a first-grader would be ashamed of. Little America, I'm pleased to say, is not one of those books. As a Palestinian who grew up in Jordan, hearing, seeing, reading about the Jordan in the 50's, this book seemed to recreate the feelings that such information evoked in me: A sense of faux-nostalgia for a time I had never actually lived. Why? Because the story of Kurash and its king is essentially a retelling of the stories of King Hussein as well as King Feisal, and the histories of Jordan and Iraq under the Hashemite families and the conflicts they faced. The book perfectly captures the many challenges that faced the monarchy back in the 50's when it had to deal with the influx of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 "nakbah", not to mention the Ba'ath movements, the Islamic Brotherhood, and of course Jamal Abd Al-Nasser, the strongest force in the Arab world at the time. The fact that this book was written by an American is, for me, still hard to believe, as even the names of the Arabic characters actually make a distinction between different ARabic nationalities, as opposed to just using the word "Abu". Aside from that, the story is expertly told in a non-conventional and extremely interesting fashion. This is no thriller, as one other reviewer said, but it still is one of the most fascinating, interesting, and, to sound cliched, important books of our generation. Bravo Mr. Bromell.