Reviews

Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, Part One: 1783-1953 by Jean-Pierre Filiu

tymelgren's review

2.0

David B is a little bit famous for EPILEPTIC, which is about growing up with a brother who has severe epilepsy, and less famous for THE ARMED GARDEN, a collection of Persian legends that I thought was better than EPILEPTIC. Now he's teamed up with some guy named Jean-Pierre to try to teach us about the U.S. and the Middle East, and it's not very good. I guess I learned a couple of facts, but the most interesting stories in here are given so little context that I had no idea what actually happened or why. That aint good history. The constant conflation of Americans/Christianity/capitalism and Arabs/Islam/violence seems lazy and boring, and the retelling of the Gilgamesh epic (in which all dialogue is replaced with quotes from Bush & Cheney??) is stupid, baffling, and meaningless. Sorry that I'm so mad about this, it's just because I want things to be good, and this could have been like really useful if it was good, but instead it sucks. I'll probably read the second volume if it ever gets made, but I sort of hope it doesn't.


http://tymelgren.com/books/october2012bookreport.html

bodagirl's review

3.0

It was interesting, because I really didn't know much about the history of the Middle East, but it was very uneven. It went into great detail on some events (almost too much) and then skimmed over others. Granted that is probably because the historical record is also uneven, but I feel more could have been done.