Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity

The Rise Of Christianity at amazon.com

Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity

Reader Rating: 7.9/10

Salaams! The Rise Of Christianity is a book I borrowed at the last RLT Mtg from TimL, who had read & I believe reviewed it; StevenG was also reading then and raved on about it. I was not disappointed, though there were times I slogged through some rather dry, social-scientific-statistical-arithmetical equations and jargon. Overall, it was a fascinating book with a number of interesting observations and insights.

The core question at the heart of this book is: "How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization?"

Bottom line: Stark gives good evidence and reasoning for believing that Christianity grew in the early days at the rate of 40 percent per decade (or 3.42 percent per year). This figure, arrived at by good reasonable scholarly evidence, means that by the year A.D. 300 there were an estimated 5 - 7.5 million Christians throughout the Roman Empire. Beginning with a low estimate of 1,000 Christians by A.D. 40 (purposely low & conservative), this rate of growth statistically means there were approximately 33.8 million Christians in the Empire of some 60 million people (a whopping 56.5%!!) in A.D. 350. By this time contemporary writers were claiming a majority of Christians in the Empire, and Constantine had converted to Christianity and made it the state religion, and the world was never to be the same again.

But, what was it that caused this rapid rate of growth? Stark does a good job analyzing a number of factors, of which I found the most interesting to be:

1. A major factor was that the Christian movement remained an open and inclusive network of relationships which thrived on "direct and intimate interpersonal attachments." This network remained open and sought ways to make an impact on "adjacent social networks."
2. When epidemic disasters struck, as they did in 165 and in 250 with high mortality rates, Christians were better able to cope with them--they placed a high value on services to help those in their community who were afflicted (often to their own detriment). This factor is related to the theological foundation Christians possessed, as opposed to surrounding pagans who had no hope or reason to help others.
3. Prohibitions on infanticide, abortions, and adultery meant Christian women were more often more fertile--resulting in a much higher women to men sex ratio than pagans--and consequently enjoyed a higher status in society compared to pagan women (and leadership roles in churches!). Stark believes they were also often responsible for converting their pagan husbands, which added to the rapid rate of conversions.
4. Martyrs who willing gave their lives for the sake of the faith put an incredible, tangible value on Christianity to the those watching them, and the suffering and stigma early Christians experienced also worked to keep "free riders" (modern jargon -- free loaders!) to a minimum.
5. Last, but not least, Stark points out that an obvious factor (what he actually feels is the ultimate one) in the rapid rise & spread of Christianity was its central theological doctrines. "For God so loved the world..." was radical and revolutionary, as was its corollary, that just as God loves humans, so Christians must love one another. Even more radical was the tenet that this love should also be extended to those outside the family and immediate community.

I end with this very astute comment and observation by Stark in his final chapter (and related footnote):

"It is deemed bad taste nowadays to suggest that any religious doctrines are 'better' than any others.(1)
(1 ) So long as the doctrines are not fundamentalist, than which all doctrines are deemed to be better--a view I do not share."

Well put!

==========================
The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force ....
by Rodney Stark "FINALLY, all questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done?..." (more)

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Editorial Reviews
-- The Christian Century
"This book raises, simply and brilliantly, just the kinds of questions anyone concerned with early Christianity should ask."

Product Description:
This "fresh, blunt, and highly persuasive account of how the West was won--for Jesus" (Newsweek) is now available in paperback. Stark's provocative report challenges conventional wisdom and finds that Christianity's astounding dominance of the Western world arose from its offer of a better, more secure way of life.

"Compelling reading" (Library Journal) that is sure to "generate spirited argument" (Publishers Weekly), this account of Christianity's remarkable growth within the Roman Empire is the subject of much fanfare. "Anyone who has puzzled over Christianity's rise to dominance...must read it." says Yale University's Wayne A. Meeks, for The Rise of Christianity makes a compelling case for startling conclusions. Combining his expertise in social science with historical evidence, and his insight into contemporary religion's appeal, Stark finds that early Christianity attracted the privileged rather than the poor, that most early converts were women or marginalized Jews--and ultimately "that Christianity was a success because it proved those who joined it with a more appealing, more assuring, happier, and perhaps longer life" (Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago).

Product Details
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco; 1st HarperCollins pbk. ed edition (June 18, 1997)
• ISBN: 0060677015
• Average Customer Review: based on 21 reviews. (Write a review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank in Books: #4,893
=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: M Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?

M Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? at amazon.com


Book Review: M Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?

Salaams! Just finished up an excellent book I've been reading now for quite awhile in my morning devotions--took it slow & easy (my second read through it): Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?, by Roland Allen. As many of you are already no doubt aware, Allen was a man waaaaay ahead of his time; the book was first published in 1912, with a Second Edition in 1927 (I bought my Eerdmans 1979 edition brand new for $2.95!). A companion volume, which ought to be read as well, is called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It.

Allen takes an in-depth look at Paul's CP & leadership training methods, beginning with a discussion on whether Paul enjoyed any special strategic, moral or social conditions which contributed to his incredible success which we do not have in this day and age. Answer on all counts--negative. Allen then continues with an excellent review of Paul's Gospel presentation (miracles, finance, substance), training methods (teaching, baptism & ordination candidates), dealings with organized churches (authority & discipline, unity), and finally he makes some applications for his (and our) time.

His analysis is right-on, very applicable to our day and age, and is cogently argued. This is CPM-type methodology waaaaay before there ever was any such designation. His focus, as in all his works, is about how to plant TRULY indigenous churches with local leadership who have a passion/vision for their own and beyond from the beginning. His focus is about keeping things simple and keeping everything in the hands of the locals from the beginning. One of the key points of the whole book: the paramount "answer" to any and every question that locals ask of the M should always be: "Tell it to the church." Yes, in our case that might mean a very small handful to begin with. Allen ends the book with the observation of a real M and the example of his work in following this advice, saying that he had "learnt that the secret of success in his work lay in dealing with the church as a body." Doing more and getting farther by actually doing less...

To summarize Allen's application points from the secrets of the Apostle Paul's success in founding churches (emphasis mine):
1. "The test of all teaching is practice" (so that it can be easily grasped, retained, used, and passed on)
2. "All organization...must not be so elaborate or so costly that small and infant communities cannot supply the funds necessary for its maintenance. The test of all organizations is naturalness and permanence."
3. "The management of all local funds should be entirely in the hands of the local church which should raise and use their own funds for their own purposes..." (the test of finances is the lack of dependence on or dictation by a foreign entity)
4. "The whole community is responsible for the proper administration of baptism, ordination and discipline" (the test of being the body of Christ is the mutual responsibility of its members--owning it themselves)
5. "Authority to exercise spiritual gifts should be given freely and at once...The test of preparedness to receive the authority is the capacity to receive the grace"

The lingering challenge for us and all modern M work is stated clearly by Allen in his Introduction to the Second Edition:

We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire to impart not only the Gospel, but the Law and Customs. With that spirit, St Paul's methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority...with an unhesitating faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to apply them to his hearers and to work out their appropriate external expressions in them.

Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?
by Roland Allen "In little more than ten years St Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia..." ( more )

Product Details
Paperback: 188 pages
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company    (June 1, 1962)
ISBN: 0802810012
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Spotlight Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Timeless principles for carrying out the church's mission , December 31, 2000
Reviewer:
Eddy Hall (Goessel, KS USA)  - See all my reviews
"Roland Allen was an Anglican missionary in China from 1895 to 1903.  For a few years afterward he was in charge of an English parish.  For the next 40 years he was writing on missionary principles.  Much of what he wrote seemed to be forgotten.  The present work and a later volume written in answer to criticisms (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes which Hinder It) are the only two that have been regularly reprinted.  Allen himself told his son that his writings would come into their own about the year 1960.  In fact that year saw the republication in a single volume of many of his other writings."  [From the foreword.]

It is amazing to me that Allen wrote this book in 1912.  Even today his radical critique of Western missionary methods is cutting edge, though the biblical principles he advocates are now being embraced more and more by some ministries that are not tradition-bound.

While this book and its sequel (Spontaneous Expansion) address mission work specifically, the principles described do not apply only to how the people of one country do missionary work in another.  These books really are about what the Bible has to show us about how to carry out the mission of the church, whether in our own culture, in ministering cross-culturally in our own back yard, or planting churches across an ocean.

If Allen is right in the conclusions he draws about finance (chapter 6), many (most?) church planting efforts may be operating by financial principles that do more to hinder rather than help establish a healthy, self-supporting church.

His observations on the biblical pattern for selecting and equipping elders for local church leadership challenged not only the status quo of the Anglican church of his day, but continue to challenge the practices of most churches today.

In my work as a church consultant, my sense is that (1) most church members, and probably even most pastors, are unaware of the radical differences between our presentday ways of doing church and the New Testament precedents, because they are largely ignorant of the biblical precedents; and (2) even when they become aware of some difference, there is a tendency to assume that those differences are inconsequential.  Yet many of the most passionate of today's church leaders look at the church of Acts and long to see God's Spirit at work with that kind of power in the church today.

If we really long to recapture the vitality of the New Testament church, wouldn't it be worthwhile to seek to understand the principles by which it operated?  (The "Methods" of the book's title is misleading; "Principles" would be more accurate.)  Then we can consider whether those principles might be essential to the spiritual vitality of the church and go about asking how we can apply those principles in our context.

For anyone serious about developing such a biblically-rooted vision of how to go about doing church, I highly recommend this book and its companion volume.

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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time

Bobby Fischer Goes to War at amazon.com


Book Review: Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time

Reader Rating: 9/10

Salaams! Just finished up an incredibly interesting book focusing on the Chess World Championship held in the summer of 1972 in Reykjavik, Iceland, between the Russian world champion Boris Spassky and the American challenger Bobby Fischer--in what has become known as the "most extraordinary chess match of all time." What a match! What shenanigans! What twists & turns! What intensity! What moves & mistakes under pressure! This tournament, taking place over almost two months, kept the world's attention transfixed over that summer.

This match came to be viewed as an extension of the Cold War between the West & the Soviets: a face-to-face battle between two real people who were proxies for their countries and their radically different political systems. Neither of these chess players were actually good representatives of their own political systems; Spassky was very much a free-spirited, privileged, and self-opinionated Soviet, and Fischer was anything but a true patriotic "true blue-rah-rah" American.

Another reason the match captivated the world's attention was that, with the exception of a two year world champion stint by a Dutchman, the world championship of chess had been in the hands of a Russian or Soviet (Armenian, Lithuanian, Georgian) consistently since 1927. The Soviets saw their domination of world chess as a demonstration of their system's ideological superiority. The weakness of the western mind and its capitalistic system was displayed in their weakness at the mentally-challenging & taxing, logical game of chess, Soviet propaganda proudly proclaimed. That was about to change, though, as a rather rude and crude, uneducated and uncultured New Yorker named Bobby Fischer (finally) sat down at the chess table in Iceland across from Boris Spassky.

The first move of the match was almost never made. The book details the innumerable starts and fits, twists and turns that the chess organizers, teams, and audiences were forced to undergo throughout the tournament due to Fischer's unrelenting demands and commands. The brilliant Fischer was rather like a petulant child and mad scientist all rolled into one; his demands were outrageous and often trivial, but due to his worldwide audience draw, he usually got his way--probably one too many times. Spassky was keen to play against Fischer and so mostly gave it to his demands for the sake of keeping the tournament alive. The Soviet team was only glad to give in and be flexible while Spassky was ahead 2 - 0, with Fischer playing black in Game #3. But once Fischer brilliantly began pulling ahead, the Soviets began making their own outrageous accusations (so, well, Soviet-like): the champion's food and/or drinks had been tampered with, the lighting above the chess board which Fischer had specially requested was adversely affecting Spassky, the U.S. team, Fischer's specially-requested chair was beaming X-Rays at Spassky to confuse his mind, etc., etc. They brought in special investigators, scientists, and psychologists to test everything, all to no avail.

In the end, it was the absolutely brilliant chess playing of the challenger Fischer that won the day and the tournament. And sadly then, with Fischer's final victory of the long sought-after title of world champion, came his ultimate demise into paranoia and reclusiveness, resulting in his never playing sanctioned, competitive chess again (he has been in Japanese police custody for the last six months--soon to be extricated to the U.S. to face criminal charges stemming from his $5 million "rematch" with Spassky in 1992 in then-prohibited Yugoslavia).

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Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
by David Edmonds ,John Eidinow "It is five o'clock in the evening of Tuesday, 11July 1972..." ( more )

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Product Details
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition    (March, 2004)
ISBN: 0060510242
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The duo that crafted the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker returns to chronicle "the most notorious chess duel in history," the 1972 match between world champion Boris Spassky and challenger Bobby Fischer. Although the competition has achieved iconic status, Edmonds and Eidinow do an excellent job of making the story fresh, recreating the atmosphere of controversy that surrounded both players long before they met in Reykjavik, not to mention the extraordinary hurdles tournament organizers faced in getting the already eccentric Fischer to even show up, which ultimately required a phone call from Henry Kissinger and prize money put up by an English millionaire. Fischer's troubling personality is a matter of common knowledge, but the thawing of the Cold War enables the authors to flesh out the Soviet side of the story, offering a fuller perspective on the friction between the rebellious grandmaster and Communist officials, and revelations about the very active presence of the KGB during the games, while debunking other rumors about plots to poison or brainwash Spassky. (Declassified FBI files also present groundbreaking information about Fischer and his family.) The actual chess has been analyzed to death elsewhere, so the authors don't delve into the games' details much except when the players made horrendous blunders, which segue into the underlying focus on psychology, addressing Fischer's ability to get away with bullying officials into meeting his exacting demands and Spassky's loss of confidence over the course of the match. Even if you think you know the story, this highly entertaining account will surprise and delight.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description:
In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men -- the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer -- met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.

Thirty years later, David Edmonds and John Eidinow, authors of the national bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, have set out to reexamine the story we recollect as the quintessential cold war clash between a lone American star and the Soviet chess machine -- a machine that had delivered the world title to the Kremlin for decades. Drawing upon unpublished Soviet and U.S. records, the authors reconstruct the full and incredible saga, one far more poignant and layered than hitherto believed.

Against the backdrop of superpower politics, the authors recount the careers and personalities of Boris Spassky, the product of Stalin's imperium, and Bobby Fischer, a child of post-World War II America, an era of economic boom at home and communist containment abroad. The two men had nothing in common but their gift for chess, and the disparity of their outlook and values conditioned the struggle over the board.

Then there was the match itself, which produced both creative masterpieces and some of the most improbable gaffes in chess history. And finally, there was the dramatic and protracted off-the-board battle -- in corridors and foyers, in back rooms and hotel suites, in Moscow offices and in the White House.

The authors chronicle how Fischer, a manipulative, dysfunctional genius, risked all to seize control of the contest as the organizers maneuvered frantically to save it -- under the eyes of the world's press. They can now tell the inside story of Moscow's response, and the bitter tensions within the Soviet camp as the anxious and frustrated apparatchiks strove to prop up Boris Spassky, the most un-Soviet of their champions -- fun-loving, sensitive, and a free spirit. Edmonds and Eidinow follow this careering, behind-the-scenes confrontation to its climax: a clash that displayed the cultural differences between the dynamic, media-savvy representatives of the West and the baffled, impotent Soviets. Try as they might, even the KGB couldn't help.

A mesmerizing narrative of brilliance and triumph, hubris and despair, Bobby Fischer Goes to War is a biting deconstruction of the Bobby Fischer myth, a nuanced study on the art of brinkmanship, and a revelatory cold war tragicomedy.

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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: Ali and Nino: A Love Story

Book Review: Ali and Nino: A Love Story

Ali and Nino: A Love Story on amazon.com

Reading Rating: 8.5/10

Salaams! Just finished reading a great book that GregP recommended called Ali and Nino: A Love Story, by Kurban Said. Written back in 1937 and then "lost" to the world, it is hailed as a "lost classic." It is much more than a love story, although it is that as well. It is really the story of the clash of two worlds--of the East (Asia) and the West (Europe)--and the way that two people who worked through those differences due to their deep love for each other. Ali is an Azeri from Baku, a Muslim--from old, aristocratic Azeri stock; one of his uncles is a prince in Persia and has a big palace and harem. Nino is Georgian and Christian, also from a very wealthy aristocratic family. This is the story of their upbringing and their intertwined lives on the eve of World War I. The story carries through the White Russian defeat by the Turks and then just into the Red Russian victory which swept Azerbaijan back into the "Russian fold" and the Soviet Union for 60+ years.

A glimpse into the tugging between the East and the West is revealed when Ali is on the TransCaucacasian train going back to Baku from part of a summer spent in Georgia with Nino's family/relatives (great cross-cultural adjustments unpacked there) and he sees the desert and a caravan of camels. He thinks:

This was where I belonged, to the camels, to the men leading them, to the sand! These Europeans with their wars, their cities, their Czars, Kaisers and Kings? Their sorrows, their happiness, their cleanliness and their dirt--we have a different way of being clean or dirty, good or bad, we have a different rhythm and different faces. Let the train rush to the West. My heart and soul belong to the East.

This unique couple's travels and experiences take them to Georgia, Daghestan, and parts of Persia--with some very interesting days spent in Tehran during the days of the holy Shi'ite month of Moharram.


ISBN: 0385720408
Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday
Publication Date: 10/2000
282 pages

Ali and Nino: A Love Story (Anchor Books)
Said, Kurban; Graman, Jenia; Theroux, Paul
Kurban Said was the pseudonym of Lev Nussimbaum, who grew up in Baku and died in Italy in 1942.

"Ali and Nino", first published in Vienna in 1937, is an intense, enduring love story -- a sweeping tale of love challenged by war and by the cultural divide between a westernized Christian girl (Nino) and a tradition-minded Muslim boy (Ali).

The lovers meet in oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan -- a town on the Caspian Sea where east meets west, separated from Russia by both the Caucasian mountains and by its Muslim majority. Growing up in a powerful Islamic family (his uncle has an opulent palace complete with a harem) Ali loves the desert, engages in blood feuds, and embraces the fierce code of honor of his ancestors. But he also goes to a westernized Russian-run high school, where he falls in love with Nino, a beautiful Christian girl from Georgia who loves western fashion and finds the concept of wearing a veil unthinkable.

Ali and Nino decide that their love can overcome all the differences between them -- and they marry despite their families' objections. But then the beginnings of WWI and the Russian Revolution stir up all the old divisions -- Muslims against Christians, Russians against Persians, Shiites against Sunnis. Ali must meet his former classmates on opposite sides of the battlefield, and Nino must flee Azerbaijan with their infant daughter. Although their love is still strong, it becomes increasingly impossible for them to remain true to their conflicting loyalties. A sweeping romantic saga that has been compared to Dr. Zhivago and Gone with the Wind, "Ali and Nino" is at once an unforgettable romance, a war-time adventure, and a portrait of the political and ethnic turmoil that continues in this region even today.

Publisher Comments:
First published in Vienna in 1937, this classic story of romance and adventure has been compared to Dr. Zhivago and Romeo and Juliet. Its mysterious author was recently the subject of a feature article in the New Yorker, which has inspired a forthcoming biography. Out of print for nearly three decades until the hardcover re-release last year, Ali and Nino is Kurban Said's masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.

It is the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea, poised precariously between east and west. Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim schoolboy from a proud, aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European sensibilities. To be together they must overcome blood feud and scandal, attempt a daring horseback rescue, and travel from the bustling street of oil-boom Baku, through starkly beautiful deserts and remote mountain villages, to the opulent palace of Ali's uncle in neighboring Persia. Ultimately the lovers are drawn back to Baku, but when war threatens their future, Ali is forced to choose between his loyalty to the beliefs of his Asian ancestors and his profound devotion to Nino. Combining the exotic fascination of a tale told by Scheherazade with the range and magnificence of an epic, Ali and Nino is a timeless classic of love in the face of war.

Review:
"Poignant and beautiful...alive with a vividly unique vision of colliding cultures and enduring love."-Newsweek
Review:
"One feels as if one had dug up buried treasure--. An epic of cultural change that seems more immediate than this morning's headlines."-The New York Times
Review:
"The brilliant sunset light [Ali and Nino] sheds on a millennial civilization is like living history; the alien yet immensely human characters draw one into their world with vivid conviction. The rescue of this novel is certainly an important literary event."-Mary Renault
Review:
"An emotional magic carpet...Rich, exciting, and brightly amusing as well as sorrowful along the way, page after iridescent page."The Plain Dealer

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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Wade Burleson's blog: Grace and Truth To You

FLASH: Here's an important blog to follow that has illuminated some very sad developments in recent days regarding the IMB and SBC


Wade Burleson's blog: Grace and Truth To You

Book Review: In Footsteps of Alexander the Great

Book Review: In Footsteps of Alexander the Great


In Footsteps of Alexander the Great on amazon.com


Salaams! Went to see the recent movie by Oliver Stone and then had to read a book to learn more and so read In Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia, by Michael Wood (an accompanying BBC 4-hour program is also available).

Reading Rating: 8.5 (of 10)

Thoroughly enjoyed this read and highly recommend it. The book has great maps of Alexander's routes/battles as well as wonderful photographs and illustrations of modern-day Alexander sites and archeological evidence.

Based on the most reliable early sources, the author spent months retracing the incredible 6+ year journey of Alexander II of Macedon (known both as "the Great" and "the Accursed"), as he rampaged through modern-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan/India. Against all odds, Alexander and his Macedonian troops (using the dreaded phalanx and a variety of innovative siege weapons) defeated the mighty Persian Empire (Darius III), subjugating lands and peoples across the then-known world, while catalyzing unique Hellenistic-Eastern cultural mixes in the wake of his conquests.

Amazing how many places--still to this day--have either archeological evidence or legendary, still passed-on stories of Alexander's conquests. Amazing what was accomplished in his short 32-year life.

I'm looking forward to both seeing the book's accompanying BBC program (on DVD now) and to reading a more in-depth historical treatment of Alexander's feats (Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C., by Peter Green).

----------------------
In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia
by Michael Wood

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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Intrepid explorer in search of the past, British journalist Michael Wood follows the path of Alexander the Great and his army from Macedonia to the Himalayas and beyond in the fourth century B.C. Always one for adventures to match those of his heroes, Wood takes his readers over harsh deserts and snow-clogged passes, stopping off at interesting places along the way: a Zoroastrian temple in Iran, for instance, where we learn that Alexander is regarded as a devil and called Iskander Gujaste , Alexander the Accursed. Devil or no, Wood allows us to appreciate Alexander for the daring of his enterprise: his conquest of southwestern Asia occupied 22,000 miles and two decades.

Product Description:
Between 334 and 324 B.C. the Macedonian army, led by Alexander the  Great, marched relentlessly across Asia. An event of bravery and cruelty,  endurance and greed, Alexander's expedition was a turning point in human  history. His conquest opened up contacts between Europe and Asia, unleashing  astonishing historical energies that continue to affect the world today. This  extraordinary book recreates Alexander's 22,000 mile, ten-year expedition from  Greece to India, following as much as possible the actual route of his journey. Historian Michael Wood traversed seventeen countries, trekking through the  Zagros Mountains to find the lost site of Alexander's battle at the "Persian  Gates," drinking black tea in the Hindu Kush, listening to ancient stories of  Sikander e Aazem, and crossing the Makran Desert with twenty-three camels. He  traveled with Lebanese traders, Iranian pilgrims, Afghan guerrillas, and other  local people on a journey that took him through many of the twentieth century's  major trouble spots, including Beirut and Kurdistan.

Wood bases his account of Alexander's conquest on the texts of Greek and Roman  historians, but he also reconsiders the Greek adventure in terms of modern ideas  on colonialism, orientalism, and racism. The Macedonian conquest, which has  mainly been seen through Greek sources, is illuminated for the first time by  medieval travelers' narratives, newly discovered oracles, and prophecies on  papyrus or clay tablet.

At the heart of Wood's powerful story is the towering, enigmatic character of  Alexander the Great. He ascended the throne at twenty, conquered much of the  known world before he was thirty, and was dead by the age of thirty-two. A ruthless politician, brilliant military tactician, devoted son, family man,  lover of both women and men, Alexander was known for his extreme generosity as well as his ferocious cruelty. Following in the conqueror's footsteps centuries  later, Michael Wood overhears the words of the fabled Greek mermaid who calls to  passing sailors: "Great Alexander still lives!"

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Link to NPR interview with author Michael Wood:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1000875
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In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia
by Michael Wood
University of California Press
Due/Published: August 2001, 256 pages, paper
ISBN 0520231929

Between 334 and 324 B.C. the Macedonian army, led by Alexander the Great, marched relentlessly across Asia. An event of bravery and cruelty, endurance and greed, Alexander's expedition was a turning point in human history. His conquest opened up contacts between Europe and Asia, unleashing astonishing historical energies that continue to affect the world today. This extraordinary book recreates Alexander's 22,000 mile, ten-year expedition from Greece to India, following as much as possible the actual route of his journey.

Historian Michael Wood traversed seventeen countries, trekking through the Zagros Mountains to find the lost site of Alexander's battle at the "Persian Gates," drinking black tea in the Hindu Kush, listening to ancient stories of Sikander e Aazem, and crossing the Makran Desert with twenty-three camels. He traveled with Lebanese traders, Iranian pilgrims, Afghan guerrillas, and other local people on a journey that took him through many of the twentieth century's major trouble spots, including Beirut and Kurdistan.

Wood bases his account of Alexander's conquest on the texts of Greek and Roman historians, but he also reconsiders the Greek adventure in terms of modern ideas on colonialism, orientalism, and racism. The Macedonian conquest, which has mainly been seen through Greek sources, is illuminated for the first time by medieval travelers' narratives, newly discovered oracles, and prophecies on papyrus or clay tablet.

At the heart of Wood's powerful story is the towering, enigmatic character of Alexander the Great. He ascended the throne at twenty, conquered much of the known world before he was thirty, and was dead by the age of thirty-two. A ruthless politician, brilliant military tactician, devoted son, family man, lover of both women and men, Alexander was known for his extreme generosity as well as his ferocious cruelty. Following in the conqueror's footsteps centuries later, Michael Wood overhears the words of the fabled Greek mermaid who calls to passing sailors: "Great Alexander still lives!"

"British historian Wood (The Magician's Doubts, 1995, etc.) absorbingly recreates Alexander the Great's epic conquests. Alexander ascended the Macedonian throne at the age of 20, conquered much of the world known to the ancients by 30, and died aged 32. Born in 356 B.C., Alexander was shaped by barbarian and classical forces: His mother, Olympias, was intensely devoted to strange religious cults, but Alexander was tutored by one of the great philosophers of all time, Aristotle. When Alexander succeeded to the throne in 336 B.C. after his father's assassination, he became the master of a kingdom that already dominated a Greece exhausted by the war between Athens and Sparta. Shortly after becoming king, he ruthlessly suppressed an uprising by the city of Thebes, then invaded Persia, Greece's ancient enemy. Wood retraces Alexander's astounding victories over Darius at Granicus and Issus; his easy victories over Phoenicia and Egypt, where the oracle of Zeus declared him "son of God" and where he founded Alexandria, destined to become one of the great cities of the ancient world; his invasion of Babylonia and his completion of the destruction of Darius' army at Arbela and Persepolis; and subsequent conquests of central Asia and India. Wood meditates on the transformed landscape of Alexander's world, his frequent atrocities (like the sacking of Persepolis and the massacre of the Branchidae), and his lasting legacy of destruction. To this day, in many countries Alexander touched, the name Iskander is a byword for destruction, ambition, and greed. Nonetheless, Wood points out, although Alexander's conquests were transient and his empire short-lived, his rule was a critical turning point for the ancient world, generating creative energies and contacts between East and West that would never have occurred otherwise. Wood has thoughtfully recreated one of ancient history's most fascinating periods.-- Kirkus Reviews)

"Relying on Greek and Roman sources, Wood tells a glorious story with some very dark shadows . . . The harrowing tale of his own trek over the same ground makes clear how heroic Alexander's army was. And in a dozen countries, in cities and villages, in desert camps and on mountains of the Hindu Kush, he found that Alexander is fiercely alive in poetry, songs, and folk tales, in the imaginations of millions." (New York Times Book Review)

"In his passion for history, Michael Wood likes to search out those corners of time that survive more as romantic myth than as reliable memory, that float in the past seemingly unconnected to the world as we know it . . . Naturally, like any researcher, he delights in discovering the unknown, yet his objective is not academic. Rather it is to spread his enthusiasm for history to as many people as possible." (New York Times)

"This is a marvelous adventure and a delicious taste of history." (Publishers Weekly)

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: Chronicles: Volume One

Book Review: Chronicles: Volume One

Chronicles: Volume One at amazon.com


Salaams! Got a wonderful Christmas present which I have just finished reading: Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan. Won't bore you with a long, drawn-out review of this monumental, first-of-three planned autobiographical volumes, as I know you're not interested. It's anything but your ordinary autobiography, focusing mainly on his arrival as a 20 year old newbie on the folk music scene in New York City in 1961 and the background of his recordings of "Bob Dylan" (his first album-1962), "New Morning" (12th-1970) and "Oh Mercy" (34th-1989). Dylan has a unique writing style that is both informal and introspective (making for some fascinating "rabbit-chasing" sections that take you here, there, & everywhere).

Having read 20+ other people's take on Bob, it was quite refreshing to read Bob's take on things. Sure, he leaves lots of holes and blanks, but what he does share is done in a warm, fluid, full-on, honest-as-Bob-can-get, personal style. References and analyses of all kinds of music and literature abounds--very interesting to hear about the major influences on his own unique style and hear what helped push him "over the edge" into legendary musical history. History which he's still making...Bring on Volume Two!

==============
Book review - Bob Dylan Chronicles

 After four decades of cantankerous, monosyllabic interviews and one legendarily impenetrable novel (Tarantula), fans feared what Dylan's self-penned Chronicles would be like.
But what a relief, this slim autobiography (Simon & Shuster) is a joy. Rather than plodding through a conventional life story, Dylan zooms in on significant episodes. It's unconventional, but beautifully and forcefully told.
Dylan starts in 1961 with his arrival in New York, aged 20.
The next part of the book skips past his phenomenal success and influential songs, and deals only with the horror of fame. At home, he is besieged by fans ­ "gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows, stragglers", he calls them.
It is his life on his own terms ­ no photographs, no introducing his wife and children, no mention of the convulsions when he went electric with The Band, hardly a word about his greatest songs. Still, this is only Volume One.
Lesley Friedman
==============

Interviews
Bob Dylan: A Conversation
 
bobdylan.com
Audiobook Excerpts
Listen to excerpts from 'Chronicles: Volume One,' the audiobook, read by Sean Penn.
On songwriting
On visiting Woody Guthrie in the hospital
On getting his first big break to play at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village
On re-finding his way in the sessions for the 'Oh Mercy' album, and an appreciation of Johnny Cash and Sun Records
On rejecting the label of "conscience of a generation"

NPR 100
Dylan songs on NPR's list of most influential tunes of the 20th century
Oct. 21, 2000
'Blowin' in the Wind'
Nov. 9, 2000
'Like a Rolling Stone'
 
All Songs Considered
Multimedia presentations on Dylan works
'Bob Dylan Live 1964'
'Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache'
 
Morning Edition, October 12, 2004 · Bob Dylan's new book, Chronicles: Volume One, portrays him at the extremes of his career. On one page it's 1961. He's a young man making a call from a phone booth in New York City, waiting for his shot at fame. On another, it's the mid-1980s, and he's a burned-out rock star who can no longer feel the power of his own songs.

When members of the Grateful Dead asked him to return to performing his old songs, Dylan made up an excuse and fled. Eventually, he found his way back to the road, touring constantly in hopes of being discovered by a new audience.

In a rare interview, Dylan tells NPR's Steve Inskeep he never accepted being called the "voice of his generation."

"That was just a term that could create problems for somebody, especially if someone just wants to keep it simple, write songs and play them," Dylan says. "Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way."

Below is Chapter 1, "Markin' Up the Score," from Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster).

Book Excerpt
Lou Levy, top man of Leeds Music Publishing company, took me up in a taxi to the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street to show me the pocket sized recording studio where Bill Haley and His Comets had recorded "Rock Around the Clock" -- then down to Jack Dempsey's restaurant on 58th and Broadway, where we sat down in a red leather upholstered booth facing the front window.

Lou introduced me to Jack Dempsey, the great boxer. Jack shook his fist at me...
-----------------------------------------

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: The Connecting Church

Book Review: The Connecting Church


The Connecting Church on amazon.com



Salaams! I've finally finished up a book I've been reading for awhile now: The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community, by Randy Frazee, who is the pastor of Pantego Bible Church in the D/FW area (www.pantego.org).

Reading Rating (scale of 10): 7.5

This was a pretty good book that had some good stuff on the church becoming a community (like it should!). I really liked the 3 sets of characteristics revolving around: 1) common purpose, 2) common place, and 3) common possessions (see them below with a short quote for each point). What I didn't like was that in a lot of ways the "new structures" (wineskins) the author describes are just a variation of the old structures--with small "Community" groups part of a bigger Zone group which are part of the one mother church. I like his points on the interdependence of the Body, but this is still just a way to re-org a Mega-Church with ONE Head pastor/bishop...

BUT, for me a very key passage (& VERY applicable for us wherever we are) was the following--read this carefully!:
"Consumerism in a strong economy tempts a kind of independence that can quickly diminish community. John Locke puts it succinctly when he writes, 'If we needed things we couldn't buy, many of us would have more friendships.' The pursuit and attainment of Western wealth has enabled us to bypass each other as we pursue meetings our basic needs. Poet and farmer Wendell Berry says, 'If people don't need each other, they will spend little time together telling stories to each other, and if they don't know one another's stories, how can they know whether or not trust one another?'"

Five Characteristics of Community around a Common Purpose:
1. Authority: "Someone is responsible to lead the community in such a way that it upholds and advances the common purpose. It is this authority structure that blesses and reinforces positive behavior, and holds community members accountable for negative or destructive behavior."
2. Common Creed: "a shared understanding of the beliefs and practices that guide the community."
3. Traditions: "Traditions are things you do in the same manner, at the same time, which hold great value in communicating meaning to the people of the community. A tradition can be a symbol or festival or any activity that reinforces the beliefs, values, practices, virtues, and purposes of a community."
4. Standards: "...a list of written or unwritten guidelines that define what is expected of the people of the community. These standards lay out what is considered normal behavior."
5. Common Mission: "Any true community will have a clearly defined mission that brings the individuals of a group together and knits them into a cohesive family." (like Matt 28:19-20, "making disciples" who will obey all Jesus' teachings)
Five Characteristics of Community around a Common Place:
1. Spontaneity: "If [we] are going to find fulfillment in [our] search to belong, [we] must find a small band of people who spontaneously go in and out of each other's lives"
2. Availability: "Those who have found a meaningful experience of life together discover that most of the time it is because their comrades are ready, willing and eager to lend an ear or a hand--or ever to offer the simple gift of their presence."
3. Frequency: "Simply put, people who are satisfied with the experience of community are those who spend a great deal of time together."
4. Common meals: "There is something vitally important and special about sharing a meal together. Just consider the fact that the Lord's Supper (an act of partaking together of food and drink) is one of the few New Testament rituals we are commanded to observe."
5. Geography: "The simple fact is that in all places of effective community people live in close proximity to each other--and the closer the better!"
Five Characteristics of Community around a Common Possessions:
1. Interdependency: "Interdependent persons are usually those who could, by nature of their plentiful resources and strong health, be independent but rather choose to make their resources available to others--instated of choosing to consume all they can for themselves, either through accumulating vast savings or through purchasing all kinds of amenities."
2. Intergenerational Life: "Christian community is not an occasional group get-together led by small group leaders; it is at its core a familial structure. It is patriarchal and matriarchal in structure. It is something one is trained to participate in, by those who are older, over the course of life through all the stages of life."
3. Children: "Effective places of community accept the responsibility to effectively care for, nurture, and train its children."
4. Responsibility: "When we discover true community, the place where responsibility toward others is a higher priority than standing up for our own rights, we will never want to go back."
5. Sacrifice: "From time to time...we are called on to dig deep into who we are and what we have so that in the end we become depleted in a significant way for the sake of someone else."

If interested more, check out this longer book review at 9marks.org:
A Review By Greg Gilbert
http://www.9marks.org/cc_article_email/1,,UFRJRDMxNDUyNnxDSElENTk4MDI2fENJSUQxNTYyMjcw,00.html
____________________________________
9Marks
http://www.9marks.org/9marks

The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community
Written by: Randy Frazee
Format: Hardcover, Jacketed
Page Count: 256
List Price: $16.99 {CDN:$23.99}
Size: 5-1/2 x 8-1/2
ISBN: 0-310-23308-9
Available: April 2001
Publisher: Zondervan

Description
The development of meaningful relationships, where every member carries a significant sense of belonging, is central to what it means to be the church. So why do many Christians feel disappointed and disillusioned with their efforts to experience authentic community? Despite the best efforts of pastors, small group leaders, and faithful lay persons, church too often is a place of loneliness rather than connection.

Church can be so much better. So intimate and alive. The Connecting Church tells you how. The answer may seem radical today, but it was a central component of life in the early church. First-century Christians knew what it meant to live in vital community with one another, relating with a depth and commitment that made "the body of Christ" a perfect metaphor for the church. What would it take to reclaim that kind of love, joy, support, and dynamic spiritual growth? Read this book and find out.

--------------------- from amazon.com --------------------
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Pastor and consultant Frazee begins with a problem that many church leaders
admit only hesitantly: small groups, widely hailed as a means to achieve
authentic community, often fail to achieve the hoped-for experience of "life
together." This book follows the story of Frazee's congregation, Pantego
Bible Church in suburban Dallas/Ft. Worth, in its efforts to "take [the
small group movement] to the next level." Frazee's proposal is no quick fix;
it belies megachurch stereotypes by taking a countercultural stand against
the individualism and consumerism that Frazee says plague contemporary
American life. Drawing on biblical models as well as sociological research
and urban planning principles, Frazee makes a strong case that the mobility
and privacy of "American Dream" suburbia fosters a spirit of fragmentation
and isolation that is unworkable as a basis for authentic community. Frazee
recommends "consolidating relationships," opting out of multiple activities
and superficial social circles in favor of "a circle of relationships that
produces a sense of genuine belonging." Small groups emerge as a necessary
but insufficient ingredient for attaining Frazee's vision of "biblical
community." The author's fondness for lists and systematization make for a
dense read at times, but the human insights and real-life examples that
really drive the book have a powerful appeal. Given the popularity of small
group spirituality, and its potential discontents, this book should find a
wide audience.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customers who bought this book also bought:
Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships
by Randy Frazee
Building a Church of Small Groups by Bill Donahue
The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups by
Joseph R. Myers
Emerging Church, The by Dan Kimball
Leading Life-Changing Small Groups by Bill Donahue
Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry, The by Bill Donahue

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini on amazon.com

Reader Rating: 10/10

Salaam! Have just finished yet another incredibly moving and insightful novel on Afghanistan and its history and culture and peoples: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. BTW--I got this book as a new hard cover on amazon.com's "New & Used" for about $10 with shipping; there's one listed now for $7.57 + shipping on amazon.com and at abebooks.com there is a paperback version listed for $5.51 + shipping.

This is another book born out of the real-life experience of an Afghan who grew up in the "good old days" under the rule of King Zahir Shar, prior to the first coup staged by the king's cousin Daud in 1973, which in turn led to the communist take-over, the Soviet occupation, the years of bitter internecine mujahedin civil war, and the rise & fall of the Taliban. The story evolves out of the deep, yet tragic, relationship between a young privileged Pashtun boy growing up in Kabul and the son of his father's Hazara servant. The sad history of rival ethnic relations between the Pashtun and Hazara is painstakingly evident, though I believe the novel ultimately attempts to break down the wall of separation (& discrimination) that has existed for so long between these two groups. There is a glimmer of hope by the novel's end, though the agonizing events up to that point have given little reason to expect it.

Kite flying and fighting and "running" (chasing and capturing other kites whose strings have been cut) are one of the factors at the heart of the deep bonds the two boys develop; these activities are also at the heart of the resulting tragic developments in their relationship. Story reading/telling, a father's influence on his son, and a rather "cowardly" search for some sort of redemption are another factors at play in the main character's life--and along the way there are some wonderful insights into the complexities of Afghan family and social life.

This is a story of sin, loss, deception and redemption told in a genuine voice that stirs the soul at very deep levels. A skillfully told first story from a writer whom I trust we will hear much more from in the near future.

-------------
The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead, $24.95
368 pages, ISBN 1573222453

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. And it is also about the power of fathers over sons -- their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, bringing to mind the large canvasses of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century. But just as it is old-fashioned in its narration, it is contemporary in its subject -- the devastating history of Afghanistan over the past thirty years. As emotionally gripping as it is tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.

Read Chapter One

 ==============================================
"Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past . . . Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible."
==============================================

An Afghan hounded by his past
Khaled Hosseini's shattering debut work, The Kite Runner, is the first novel to fictionalise the Afghan culture for a Western readership
Amelia Hill
Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

In this, apparently the first Afghan novel to be written in English, two motherless boys who learn to crawl and walk side by side, are destined to destroy each other across the gulf of their tribal difference in a country of dried mulberries, sour oranges, rich pomegranates and honey.

It's a Shakespearean beginning to an epic tale that spans lives lived across two continents amid political upheavals, where dreams wilt before they bud and where a search for a child finally makes a coward into a man. The Kite Runner is the shattering first novel by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan doctor who received political asylum in 1980 as civil conflict devastated his homeland.

Whatever the truth of the claim to be the first English-language Afghan novel, Hosseini is certainly the first Afghan novelist to fictionalise his culture for a Western readership, melding the personal struggle of ordinary people into the terrible historical sweep of a devastated country in a rich and soul-searching narrative.

Over the last three decades, Afghanistan has been ceaselessly battered by Communist rule, Soviet occupation, the Mujahideen and a democracy that became a rule of terror. It is a history that can intimidate and exhaust an outsider's attempts to understand, but Hosseini extrudes it simply and quietly into an intimate account of love, honour, guilt, fear and redemption that needs no dry history book or atlas to grip and absorb.

Amir is a privileged member of the dominant Pashtun tribe growing up in affluent Kabul in the Seventies. Hassan is his devoted servant and a member of the oppressed Hazara tribe whose first word was the name of his boy-master. The book focuses on the friendship between the two children and the cruel and shameful sacrifice the rich boy makes of his humble, adoring alter ego to buy the love of his own distant father. 'I ran because I was a coward,' Amir realises, as he bolts from the scene that severs his friendship with Hassan, shatters his childhood and haunts him for the rest of his life. 'I actually aspired to cowardice.'

The book charts Amir's attempts to flee culpability for this act of betrayal, seeking asylum from his hellish homeland in California and a new life buried deep in black velvet portraits of Elvis. Amir's story is simultaneously devastating and inspiring. His world is a patchwork of the beautiful and horrific, and the book a sharp, unforgettable taste of the trauma and tumult experienced by Afghanis as their country buckled.

The Kite Runner is about the price of peace, both personal and political, and what we knowingly destroy in our hope of achieving that, be it friends, democracy or ourselves.

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: An Unexpected Light

An Unexpected Light on amazon.com

Reader Rating: 10/10

Salaams! An excellent book written with an elegance of prose seldom found in "travel" literature. Being his first, and as far as I can tell, his only book, this a remarkable feat for a young writer. A real joy to read. When will this guy write again?

"...I see first the light that I have seen nowhere else and which consumes in a single leap the impurity of distance so completely as to reveal the speck of a man two miles away; I see the profile of a mountain twenty miles away...I see three fantastic summits like spears with white tips rearing up to twenty thousand feet behind us, and down by the water's edge where the valley broadens, forests of small trees glowing gold and ginger in the winter sun with delicate pointed leaves and crimson berries the colour of a country girl's lips."

It is filled with engaging writing that pushes past surface description, interacting with and analyzing personal, historical, geographical, and cultural issues. Elliot is constantly pushing out to the edge and is transparent about his anxieties, fears, and growing confidence as he becomes a "veteran" through hardened experiences.

The book ranges far and wide across geographical and historical Afghanistan; Elliot weaves a rich tapestry of various local and expat characters (including some interesting comments on some of the M's he encounters!) on his various trips through some of the most inhospitable corners of the country. Here's one snippet that stuck out to me which relates very much to our own work and need for going deep in language/culture and building relationships:

"And I was staring not just because his face [a local commander] was utterly unlike the faces I knew from home but because I felt all of a sudden that if I were to attach myself to him, apprentice-like, and follow him to his home and enter into his life and language and hardships and battles and pleasures, I might learn something substantial about the country and its culture and all that was hidden from the casual onlooker I really felt myself to be, able only to observe what was most superficial."

Lots of gems--too many to recount here. You'll have to read it yourself--which I highly recommend you do! I'll leave you with one such gem:

"Not because the East is mystic or inscrutable, but because it reveals its secrets at a pace which the Western visitor is so seldom prepared to embrace: you need time."

Product Details:
• Paperback: 473 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA (October, 2001)
• ISBN: 0312288468

First Sentence:
So much has happened in that part of the world where our paths first crossed that it's hard not to think of our time there, and of the time in which it was contained, as an island, now submerged. Read the first page

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
An account of a trip through war-torn and poverty-stricken Afghanistan, this remarkable book could have been titled "An Unexpected Beauty." Elliot, who first traveled to the country as a 19-year-old enthusiast of the mujahedin, has no illusions about the inherent shortcomings of travel writing ("a semi-fictional collection of descriptions that affirm the prejudices of the day"). He also dismisses the journalistic method, which relies on a single bombed-out street in Kabul to monolithically represent an entire nation. So it is not without some self-deprecation that he offers his own strange and improbable adventures in the country's lawless stretches and perilous mountain passes. "I had in mind a quietly epic sort of journey," he explains. "I had given up on earlier and more ambitious schemes and was prepared to make an ally of uncertainty, with which luck so often finds a partnership." Humorous, honest and wry, a devotee of Afghanistan's culture, Elliot strives to debunk the myth of "the inscrutability of the East" and paint, in careful detail, a portrait of a deeply spiritual people. For a first-time author, his literary talents are exceptional. His sonorous prose moves forward with the purposeful grace of a river; it reads like a text unearthed from an ancient land. (Feb.) Forecast: Already lauded in England, this book announces the arrival of a major travel writer. It should capture the hearts of armchair travelers who long for the grace, wit and irreverence of an era long gone.

=============================
"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
=============================

Book Review: The Weight of Glory

The Weight of Glory on amazon.com


Reader Rating = ********* (9/10)
Date: December 13, 2004 4:19:19 PM GMT+04:00

Salaams! Recently finished another of C. S. Lewis' books, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Revised & Expanded Edition, with a good Introduction by Walter Hooper, who worked with Lewis not long before he passed on). Some wonderful stuff in here on lots of different topics. Here's a quote from each of the chapters to whet your appetite:

1. "The Weight of Glory:"
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--to flippancy, no superiority, no presumption."
2. "Learning in War-Time:"
"I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would have never begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with 'normal life.' Life has never been normal."
3. "Why I am not a Pacifist:"
"All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions...On the other side, though it may not be your fault, it is certainly a fact that Pacifism threatens you with almost nothing."
4. "Transposition:"
"'We know not what we shall be;' but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like pencilled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape, not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun."
5. "Is Theology Poetry?:"
"The picture so often painted of Christians huddling together on an ever narrower strip of beach while the incoming tide of 'Science' mounts higher and higher corresponds to nothing in my own experience...Long before I believe Theology to be true I had already decided that the popular scientific picture at any rate was false...And once you accpeted Theism, you could not ignore the claims of Christ. And when you examined them it appeared to me that you could adopt no middle position. Either He was a lunatic, or God. And He was not a lunatic."
6. "The Inner Ring:"
"And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside, that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric, for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ringer can ever have it."
7. "Membership:"
"It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion. We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another. In our own age the idea that religion belongs to our private life--that it is, in fact, an occupation for the individual's hour of leisure--is at once paradoxical, dangerous, and natural...We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship."
8. "On Forgiveness:"
"I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing."
9. "A Slip of the Tongue:"
"This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to the Sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal....Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary."

The Weight of Glory
by C. S. Lewis "If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them, would reply, Unselfishness..." (more)

Enlightening addresses, February 1, 2000
Reviewer: David T. Bennett (Kingston, OH United States) - See all my reviews
     
Lewis is at his best in this collection. As the preface mentions, the sermon "the Weight of Glory," deserves to be placed on the level of the Church Fathers' writings because of its elegance and insightfulness. In this sermon Lewis looks at the afterlife, which we get glimpses of while on earth. He makes some excellent observations, and I was left thinking, "Of course!" and "Why didn't I see that before?" One of the unqiue observations Lewis makes is that all humans are truly "immortals." Cultures and the earth are mortal, but your neighbor, children, etc, are all immortal, and we need to treat them as such. The other sermons are very good (though "The Weight of Glory" has to be the best). For instance "Is Theology Poetry?" examines a topic many of us probably have never thought of examining, i.e. is our theology poetry? The address "On forgiveness" separates forgiveness (which is totally undeserving) from excusing (which is where we did something wrong, but have some valid excuse) and goes from there. Overall the points Lewis makes are enlightening and useful to our everyday lives. These are some of the best sermons I have ever heard or read.

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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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Book Review: Under A Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan

Under A Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan on amazon.com


Reader Rating = ******* (7/10)
Date: November 16, 2004 3:48:04 PM GMT+04:00

Salaams! Good insightful description of the author's incredible 1,500 miles journey in 1984 to far-flung parts of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Hodson, a Brit, studied Farsi in university and could converse with the Mujaheddin he travels with and meets along the way. He also has interesting discussions with others in the local population--like the Nuristanis, who are "disdained" by the jihadi fighters for being lazy and having no interest in the war. Nonetheless, they end up making a good living off the thousands of Mujaheddin who traverse their villages to and from bases in Pakistan. A good, close-up portrait of the Afghan Mujaheddin and their fierce determination to face any/all odds in order to rid their country of the hated atheistic usurping power, back when there were no Stingers and they were heavily outgunned (mainly using old Lee Enfield WWII rifles). Hodson has some very interesting spiritual conversations/debates with various Mujaheddin over meagre meals and bowls of hot chai in/beside mosques, their most frequent overnight abode. He meets up with two other journalists and soon after narrowly escape a surprise Soviet offensive on the Panshir Valley--replete with Mi24 attack helicopters and MiGs on low-altitude bombing runs. Hodson and one of the journalists have malaria and/or hepatitis and yet, incredibly, in their weakened state, push hard night after night, over towering mountain passes, till finally reaching the Pakistani border.

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Book Description
In 1984 journalist Peregrine Hodson crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan with rebel mujahedin smuggling arms and ammunition, beginning a thousand-mile journey through the war-torn nation. Fluent in Farsi, he was able to observe the war with stunning intimacy and eloquently capture the essence of the Afghan people and their culture. As the travelers survived bombings by Soviet aircraft, an ambush by a rival faction, and becoming swept up in a major offensive, Hodson would come to gain a unique perspective on their hopes for peace and religious devotion. Bringing together travel writing, war reportage, and history, this is a richly rendered portrait of a complex people. "Gripping and moving ... [a] powerful account of a war that has often been described as 'forgotten.'" -- Gail Pool, The Christian Science Monitor "Will long remain the most vivid account of a strange and horrible wrong." -- Ahmed Rashid, The Independent (London) "Vivid and intriguing." -- Jonathan Kirsch, -- Los Angeles Times Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the spring of 1984, British journalist Hodson traveled 1500 miles in Afghanistan, walking, living and dodging Soviet attacks with mujahedin, the rebel fighters. In this well-written, vivid, poignant account, he paints a portrait of a struggle that seems to resemble the Vietnamese battle against U.S. forces 20 years ago. Soviet helicopters and jets dominate the skies and seem to have "free-fire" zones, but despite their high-tech edge, they have no effective control in the countryside. And the fighters Hodson met are instilled by a deep conviction in their cause. Typically one mujahed states, "If all the country is burnt, all the trees dead and all the rivers dry, we will still fight. Afghanistan is a battlefield in a war between God and Satan." Hodson's experiences are an adventure tale full of incongruities: he hikes through dangerous territory listening to Bob Dylan and Bach on his Walkman. He accompanies men bringing weapons into the country from Pakistan who then lose their munitions when they are ambushed by rival mujahedin. He loses most of his luggage fording a river and argues about religion with his hosts. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Disguised as a native, British journalist Hodson traveled in 1984 in northeastern Afghanistan with some mujahedin resistance fighters. Although his account includes friendly camaraderie, beautiful landscapes, and interesting market towns, the gripping emphasis is on the hazards and hardships and the Islamic fervor that inspires the Afghans in their struggle against the Soviets. There are long grinding marches, the author's agonizing digestive problems and fevers, frequent danger in dodging... read more --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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Book Review: The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain on amazon.com


Reader Rating = ********** (8.5/10)
Date: November 11, 2004 4:50:17 PM GMT+04:00

Salaams! I'm working my way through some of C.S. Lewis' classics and have just finished up The Problem of Pain. I decided to read this little volume, as in our house church recently we have been studying through I & II Peter and have been challenged with what really makes up a theology of suffering. This is a deep and dense little book that covers a lot of ground in Lewis' typical non-traditional manner: divine omnipotence and goodness, human wickedness and the fall of man, human and animal pain, and the idea of heaven. While trying to answer the common question of why a loving God would allow suffering, Lewis directs the reader's focus to the character of God, as well as to the various meanings (and implications) of what we call pain or suffering. Bottom-line: God can take even that which is bad--and done with evil intent--and turn it to His higher purposes in our lives (both here and for the here-after). As he says:

"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love,' and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not even exist for his own sake...To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God."

My favorite part of the book was actually the last chapter on "Heaven," and I will leave you with a quote from it for your own meditation:

"Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desire and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear...Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions."

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The Problem of Pain, the first of a series of popular works on Christian doctrine, was written in 1940, twenty years before his beloved wife, Joy Davidman, died of cancer in the third year of their short-lived marriage. In the book Lewis considers the problem of suffering from a purely theoretical standpoint. Years later, struck with a daunting grief of a mourning husband he will write another classic on pain, a masterpiece of introspection: A Grief Observed. It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it. C. S. Lewis had both.

The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God — "the problem of pain" — is a fundamental theological dilemma and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion. The issue is serious enough already in Theism. Christianity aggravates the problem by insisting on Love as the essence of God; then, unexpectedly, it makes a half turn and points to the Mystery of suffering — to Jesus, "the tears of God."3 Lewis does not propose to penetrate the mystery. He is content enough with approaching pain as mere problem that demands a solution; he formulates it and goes about solving it. "If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He were almighty He would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both."4 With a characteristic conciseness and clarity Lewis sets the stage for the entire book in the first paragraph of Chapter 2. "The possibility of solving [the problem] depends on showing that the terms 'good' and 'almighty', and perhaps also the term 'happy', are equivocal: for it must be admitted from the outset that if the popular meanings attached to these words are the best, or the only possible, meaning, then the argument is unanswerable". In the remaining nine chapters, Lewis will develop this basic statement through an in-depth reflection on divine omnipotence, divine goodness, human condition, human and animal pain, and last, but not least, hell and heaven.

The main argument of The Problem of Pain is preceded by a presentation of an atheist objection to the existence of God based on the observable futility of the universe. The book starts on a personal note: "Not many years ago when I was an atheist … ". There follows a compelling picture of a universe filled with futility and chance, darkness and cold, misery and suffering; a spectacle of civilizations passing away, of human race scientifically condemned to a final doom and of a universe bound to die. Thus, "either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit". On the other hand, "if the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? […] The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been ground for religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held". But, where should we look for the sources?
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A quick warning to those who have been pointed to this book but are not Christian: you are not the audience Lewis is speaking to. This book cannot be fully grasped in its original context without some degree of belief or acceptance of Christian doctrine. It is apologetics at its best, but cannot be considered in the "self-help" category like many contemporary titles are.

That said, this must be the finest treatise on the apparent contradiction between the existence of pain and the existence of a supposedly loving God that has been written.

Succint, well-organized, thorough, yet "The Problem of Pain" still reads like it was written by a human being rather than a scholar. Some chapters bring conviction. The chapter on Hell brings fear and dread, and respect for Him who can "destroy both body and soul in Hell". The chapter on Heaven, which Lewis admits is his own philosophical foray, no one else's -- brings hope and reassurance that Heaven is your true calling, your one True Home.

This is not light reading, at least not at first. This may not be a book to recommend to someone at the height of a crisis; Lewis taxes your attention and does not take any short cuts. A "Cliff Notes" version of this book would miss the point. Pain is one of the toughest theological problems a Christian can face, either in their lives or the life of another person they know -- and Lewis does not want you going in armed with half an argument or some "Precious Moments" sentiment.

From a non-Christian POV, I would be surprised if this book made much sense -- so many of the pillars are set on Christian theology, philosophy, and tradition. If you cannot (or will not) accept the possibility of the existence of Heaven, Hell, or God, this book will be just so much incomprehensible babble.

But, as I said, it is not written for that segment of the market. This book is best read by the thinking Christian who has reservations about aspects of Christianity that seem to gloss over, avoid, or ignore the issue of human suffering.
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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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Book Review: The Bookseller of Kabul

The Bookseller of Kabul on amazon.com


Reader Rating = ******** (7.5-8.0/10)
Date: November 5, 2004 1:31:57 PM GMT+04:00

Salaams! Just finished up another book with some very good insights into Afghans/Afghanistan: The Bookseller of Kabul, by Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad. Reading Rating: 7.5-8.0/10

There are limitations to her portraits that should be taken into consideration, of course: she was only in Afghanistan for a total of 4 months and lived with this family for 3 months, she does not speak Dari/Farsi, and she is a young, blonde westerner/outsider (& journalist). As one reviewer mentions below, I sometimes questioned the author's descriptions of the character's internal thoughts, but this "documentary as novel" approach does make for a very readable writing style. Given these limitations, though, I think she does a fairly good job at giving one a "behind closed doors" peek at an urban (and fairly well-to-do) Afghan extended family. Would that we in our sub-region had many of these "life inside the local community" careful observers and recorders!

Some of the insights I appreciated: marriage arrangements, male/female relationships, the sadness/complications arising from multiple wives, father/son & employer/worker relationships, and the aspirations of the younger generation who can often feel overly controlled and claustrophobic. I think what's missing in the book is a better explanation for the cultural framework that guide and determine much of the way things are. Some of this can definitely be picked up by readers who already have an understanding of the cultural context. I'm afraid your average American/European, though, is just going to be encouraged to maintain his/her slanted, prejudiced, western-freedom-loving-everything-should-go-as-long-as-none-are-hurt, culturally-superior attitude. Women will be thought of as "enslaved," rather than seen as being protected and accorded respect/regard in the midst of an environment beset with dangerous pitfalls (with extremely damaging and life-long consequences) around every corner. Not that there aren't things that are in need of being transformed/redeemed...just like there are in our culture!

Good book that I recommend. But, be ready to see the darker and difficult side of life and culture...and for good balance (as the last reviewer below points out), to remember that there is also much to be admired and incorporated into our lives/culture from the family/community-minded Afghans.

A few different reviews below to tickle your reading senses (and I recommend "Books & Culture" if you haven't seen/read it yet):

------ from Christianity Today's "Books & Culture" ------
Books & Culture's Books of the Week: Remember Afghanistan?
By Albert Louis Zambone | posted 11/10/2003

The Bookseller of Kabul
By Asne Seirstad
Little, Brown
320 pp.; $19.95

In opinion pieces and editorials, it has become almost obligatory these days to say that Afghanistan has been forgotten by U.S. policymakers since their attention turned to Iraq. But recent events seem to indicate that Afghans are doing their best to enter the Western world. No, I don't mean that they are building new roads, opening up to the forces of globalization, and overcoming the last remnants of the Taliban. It's that they are learning the pleasures and benefits of litigation.

For her part, Seirstad seems to have delved deeper than her subjects liked. A journalist seemingly without fear, the blond Norwegian reporter was one of the brigade of media that invaded Kabul along with the forces of the Northern Alliance in November of 2001. There she met an urbane bookseller, Sultan Khan (as she re-names him in the interests of his privacy).

Seirstad was fascinated by a man who had been arrested three times by the Communist regime for selling banned books; whose bookstore had been repeatedly ransacked by the Taliban; who was passionately committed to Persian poetry, to Sufi mysticism, and to the preservation of the culture of Afghanistan. When she told him that she wished to write a book about him, he simply said "Thank you" and, in Seirstad's words "opened his family to me." She joined the Khan household and found herself living in a strange dual world of man and woman. While she slept with the women and heard their complaints and their dreams, she was also allowed to eat with the men and speak with them. Even in the family of a liberal Moslem like Sultan Khan, this was something that no Afghan woman was allowed to do.

It was Seirstad's juxtaposition of the "liberal" Khan, committed to selling the best in books and in preserving the culture of Afghanistan, and the "traditionalist" Khan that led to a lawsuit against her by "Khan" in the Norwegian courts. The bookseller claimed that he had been slandered; clearly the pseudonyms Seirstad employed in her narrative couldn't hide the identity of such a distinctive figure.

Seirstad describes in detail, for example, how Khan took a second wife when his first grew too old for him; it is a living example of polygamy that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of the reader. (And, by the way, the best example I can imagine of why Jesus says to the crowds that Moses allowed divorce "because of your hard hearts.")

This story, among others, led to Khan's lawsuit, as well as many questions about the veracity of Seirstad's account, and the "correctness" of a Westerner "judging" non-Western traditions. These questions are undoubtedly helped along by what can only be described as Seirstad's Ultra New Journalist Style. She describes the innermost thoughts of her subjects, so that what purports to be a journalistic account often reads like a novel.

----- from amazon.com ------
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war, undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As a Westerner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds of men and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait of Khan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty with which it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalist Islam. Seierstad also expertly outlines Sultan's fight to preserve whatever he can of the literary life of the capital during its numerous decades of warfare (he stashed some 10,000 books in attics around town). Seierstad, though only 31, is a veteran war reporter and a skilled observer; as she hides behind her burqa, the men in the Sultan's family become so comfortable with her presence that she accompanies one of Sultan's sons on a religious pilgrimage and witnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to his brother. This is only one of many equally shocking stories Seierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by her three brothers as ordered by their mother. Seierstad's visceral account is equally seductive and repulsive and resembles the work of Martha Gellhorn. An international bestseller, it will likely stand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life after the fall of the Taliban.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

---------- from salon.com -----------
The hypocrite of Kabul
Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad parachuted into Afghanistan and told the West exactly what it wanted to hear about that nation's women. The truth, as usual, is more complicated.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Ann Marlowe

Nov. 17, 2003  |  There's only one country foreigners write more self-righteous, intellectually assured rubbish about than Afghanistan: ours. To any American who's been asked overseas whether we all -- depending on gender -- wear miniskirts or carry guns, the lurid colors and broad brushstrokes of most journalism about Afghanistan should look familiar. Afghan men, we've been reminded over and over, are savage warriors, jealous of their honor, harsh to their long-suffering women, fanatically religious. And Afghan women -- forced to wear the burqa and be virtual slaves to their husbands -- deserve our pity.

The reality, when I made two trips to Afghanistan in 2002 to teach English and buy supplies for schools, was otherwise. From schoolboys at play to university students, Cabinet ministers to legendary commanders, Afghans were quieter, gentler and more self-contained than Americans. One young man confided that to him and his friends in northern Afghanistan, Americans' body language and loud voices seemed exaggerated, like the gestures of stage actors.

It was hard to pity the women when I lived with an extended Uzbek Afghan family in Mazar-i-Sharif and Maimana for a couple of weeks. A withered 80-year-old widow sat bala, or at the head of the room, and she was the only person who smoked. The family's resources were lavished on a bright teenage daughter, who had her own room and computer and was preparing for her university entrance exam. And the men were tender with their children and treated their wives, sisters and mothers with dignity. I felt at home more quickly than I ever have in an American household, and the fondness and respect I saw between young and old and men and women gave me new yardsticks for my own life...