This book is an engaging blend of personal narrative and political instruction, one that's difficult to put down. In the tradition of Diane McWhorter's CARRY ME HOME, Dr. Elliott teaches us things we don't know while at the same time making sure we remember that she is a human being, journeying through territory and time, actually feeling what she is learning. I wish other historians would follow these examples and show us the human face of a very daunting, sometimes abstract, always complicated subject. The Middle East is mysterious to Americans, only because we haven't lived there, visited there, loved and felt there. Once you've visited Elliott's world, you feel you can't return to comfortable complacency in front of the television set. All the right questions are being asked in this little book and thankfully, unlike so many other works on this subject, it never turns into a rant. Dr. Elliott remains confused about what she has learned. It is that state of confusion that leaves the door open to more learning, and more learning is what we all could use. The Middle East is not just a bunch of territorial barbarians, not merely a horde of religious zealots, not just a group of intolerant boundary-holders and conquerors. The Middle East is filled with people who aspire to decent, peaceful lives, if their leaders and our leaders would put all of us first and leave the strutting and sabre-rattling to a previous century. Dr. Elliott and others who have opened their eyes to a new reality have much to teach us.
--Jim Reed, author, DAD'S TWEED COAT Learn more at his website: jimreedbooks.com

Liza Elliott's book is one of the best books on the Middle East crisis out there. After reading this book, you get a sense of what's really happening in Palestine, who the Palestinians are, what their aspirations are, and why do they act the way they do. This book dispels the myths that Palestinians are terroritsts. It puts a human face on them and explains that not only are they NOT the terrorists, but that THEY are the ones being terrorized! Elliott writes about them in such a loving way that we can't help but get to know the Palestinians and sympathize with their struggle to just be left alone to live life. Elliott is a writer with depth and insight and a style of writing that keeps you turning the pages. A must to read for those who are confused about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This book is about an American woman and her journey of self-discovery. Liza Elliott, a nurse who was on a work trip with the Palestinian Red Crescent, ends up stranded in the area during an un-anticipated Israeli invasion. She is recounting her eye-witness experience of the life of the Palestinian people under opccupation in the refugee camps. During her presence, she witnesses the birth of the Palestinian "Intifadah" or awakening. This intense experience sparks her own personal intifadah. She describes her journey of internal growth and her newly found inner strength. Liza Elliott also touches on the background and history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This book is an inspiring woman's journey of self-discovery. I highly recommend it.

...It's awesome! I am so thankful to Ms. Kelly for sharing her experience. My Grandmother was also a prisoner of the Japanese in Indonesia during WWII. She had 2 babies (my dad, 6 months, & uncle, 1.5 years). I have heard 'pieces' of my Grandmothers story, but she has never been able to speak of it all. Now I know why. This book is truely a favorite of mine and always will be. Thank you Ms. Kelly. God Bless.

The Flamboya Tree, by Clara Olink Kelly, was very touching.
This is a part of history that people should know about. We know about Japan invading Pearl Harbor,and other places, but what we don't know is the people who became effected by the war.
Clara tells this story so well, she makes you feel like you are there seeing all the tragic events yourself.
This is one book that I would highly recommend to everyone, I think we can learn a great deal from it and have a better understanding of war itself.

We were bowled over by this book! Clara Kelly presents vivid and heart rending images of the heroic acts of her mother to save her children from the devastating conditions in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. This tribute to her mother also reveals the tenacity of the author and her older brother under unbelievably inhumane conditions. We will read it again.

I really like the way this book is organized. There are sections such as "Desserts" and "Canyons". When I went to Arizona the last time, I wanted to visit desserts, and I wanted to hike some Canyons, so I could simply read these sections and learn pretty much everything I wanted to know, rather than piece this information together as other travel books make you do (since they are usually organized by area). The organization also allows you to skip information such as "Art" and "History". Of course in the end I ended up being interested in these sections after all, so I read them in the care while I was there. And once again, I could focus on these sections rather than finding this information organized by area.

Long story short: I really like reading about an area by topic of interest, rather than by location. It makes travel planning much easier. Of course, your need may be different (you may be in a certain town and want to figure out what to do for instance...). In that case, this book still is useful (it DOES have short sections on individual locations), but there are other books I use for that type of research.

Overall, I can highly recommend this book. In fact, I will order some of the other books from this series for different states.

Compass Guides are the best series I have ever read. They are literate and beautifully illustrated, laid out well and very logical to use. Of the Compass Guides I've read, Cheek's Arizona is the best (followed closely by his Santa Fe Guide).

He writes with wit and style. He's not afraid to share his opinion, but never takes for granted that his is the only viewpoint. He also adds a human element that few other guides offer. Frequently you'll find sidebar articles that introduce you to a person whose story particularly illustrates the idea or place in question.

I lived in Arizona for 4 1/2 years. This is the guide that I used to learn the state. I would recommend it to anyone. When my wife and I married in Sedona, Arizona we sent copies of this book to our relatives to acquaint them with the wonderful place they'd be visiting. All who read it were delighted. You'll be, too.

This book is incredible. It gives all kinds of details ranging from local interest and lore to general information about the state. It reads like a novel and yet is very informative. Even if you have no intention of ever visiting Arizona, this is still a wonderful book to read and the photographs are breath-taking.

This book tells the disturbing story of the unprovoked expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Jewish populations from the Arab countries in the Middle East surrounding the re-birth of the State of Israel in 1948.

The book is extremely disturbing one two counts. On one count that such an ethnic cleansing and racial segregation of the Jews could be allowed to occur in the modern day, (especially so soon after the Second World War & the Holocaust), and in another regard that such a forced expulsion could be so soon forgotten and overlooked by the International Community & it's media, which have both clearly chosen to turn a blind eye to this issue.

Any accurate assessment of the Arab-Israeli conflict is indeed incomplete without addressing this very troubling subject.

Whilst some readers will inevitably draw an initial correlation to the Palestinian refugee issue, it only becomes too apparent that there are some fundamental differences.

With appropriate references to the brutal Iraqi (1941), Egyptian (1945), and Libyan (1945) pogroms inspired by local Arab movements extremely sympathetic to the Nazis/Final Solution, together with the anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo and Aden of 1947, the writer correctly asks how these events could in any way '...be attributed to the State of Israel in 1948 ?'.

As the book unfolds one is also faced with the cold, callous indictment that this forcible expulsion of the Jews, effectively made the Arab worl Judenrein. The Jews,- whose families had inhabited these Arab lands for thousands of years, leaving with only the possessions that they could carry, being robbed of homes, businesses, and all their worldly possessions by their Arab 'overlords'.

One reads the moving story of the forcible ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab nations, not because of war but due to unregulated racial hatred and gratuitously cruel Arab policies. The de-humanising policy of dhimmitude towards Jews and Christians, treated in so many ways as second class/inferior citizens in Islamic society, also receiving a commendable examination.

One is left with an understanding of the glaring dissimilarity to the Palestinian refugee issue, where the vast number of Palestinian refugees, (composed primarily of Arab migrant workers who had been living in the 'Palestine' area as little as two years prior to Israel's creation in 1948 & most of whom left their homes of their own accord) fled their homes leaving of their own accord, hoping to return when the Arab military had completed the genocide of the Jewish people from their midst in 'Palestine' too.

(Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 by Aryeh Avneri is another excellent work on this issue).

It is clear from this excellent book that the ability of the Arab world to re-settle these Palestinian refugees, is indisputable when one considers their more than sufficient geographical areas (fully one tenth of the world's land mass), together with their vast economic wealth. An outlined ability only matched by an unwillingness which instead saw the Arab world purposely deciding to use these refugees as a political anti-Israeli weapon within the UN and through the media to serve their own purposes towards their agenda of eventually eradicating the Jewish state in it's entirety.

The book showing that over the years this policy has been discovered to be a more effective way of swaying world opinion, with the Arabs having now adopted humanitarian terminology in support of the 'demands' of the Palestinians, for circumstances that they themselves largely created but for which they entirely blame the Israelis.

This is a remarkable study of how the Jewish presence in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, a presence that preceded the rise of Islam by over a thousand years, has virtually disappeared through forcible expulsion. An estimated number of only some 20,000 Jews now remaining in the North African area.

The story of a forgotten Jewish people ignored by the World and the media. Readers will be able to draw their own conclusions as to why this is so. Very highly recommended, indeed absolutely required reading on the Middle East.

In 'Jews and Arabs' (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975), the author Albert Memmi, a Sephardic Jew, observed the following: ' ..The head of an Arab state recently made us a generous and novel offer. 'Return,' he told us, 'return to the land of your birth! Are you not Arabs like us- Arab Jews?'. What lovely words! We draw a secret nostalgia from them: yes, indeed we were Arab Jews- in our habits, our culture, our music, our menus. I have written enough about it. But must one remain an Arab Jew if, in return, one has to tremble for one's life and the future of one's children and always be denied a normal existence? There are, it is true, the Arab Christians. What is not sufficiently known is the shamefully exorbitant price that they must pay for the right merely to survive.'

'The Forgotten Millions' is a compendium of nine thoughtfully interwoven essays which present a compelling sociopolitical discussion of the unheralded expulsion of ~ 850,000 Jews from Arab North Africa and the Middle East between 1941 and 1976. The presentation by Ya'akov Meron debunks a widely held misconception that this Jewish exodus resulted solely from the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. After documenting the brutal Iraqi (1941), Egyptian (1945), and Libyan (1945) pogroms inspired by local Arab movements sympathetic to the Nazis, as well as the anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo and Aden of 1947, the author rightfully asks how these events could '..be attributed to the State [of Israel] in 1948?'.

Core issues addressed effectively in Parts 2 and 3 (essays 5 through 9) include: the Jews unprovoked forced expulsion; their de facto population exchange with Arab Palestinians displaced primarily by the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948; and the stark contrast between the rapid, but difficult integration of ~650,000 Sephardic Jewish refugees from Arab lands into a resource poor Israel, relative to the Arab worlds ongoing refusal to permanently re-settle the original 540,000 Palestinian Arab refugees (and their descendants) from the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, despite more than sufficient geographical (fully one tenth of the world's land mass), and economic (i.e., Arabian peninsula, Iraqi, and Libyan oil wealth) resources. In sum, the essays in Parts 2 and 3 clearly obligate objective international policy makers and diplomats to re-address the validity of the current Palestinian Authority claim to a 'right of return' for Arab Palestinians to the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

The earlier essays in Part 1 introduce key thematic elements that support the presentations in Parts 2 and 3. Bat Ye'or highlights how the post-colonial resurgence of traditional Islamic oppression (i.e., 'dhimmitude') of Jews and Christians intensified following the creation of Israel, as the liberation of an indigenous dhimmi people (i.e., the Jews) within its historic homeland was viewed as a 'Naqbah' ('Catastrophe') not only by Arab Palestinians, but by the Islamic Arab world at large. Walid Phares summarizes how the Arab world, already Judenrein, has become progressively Christianrein as well since the end of World War II.

Ultimately, it is this widespread, brutal religious intolerance of non-Muslims in the Arab world that must be addressed and ameliorated by the international community to achieve a long term peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As a specific example, the international community should compel a 'moderate' Arab state, Jordan, to repeal immediately an unconscionable existing law that actively sanctions the notion of Judenrein (i.e., Feb. 6, 1954, Section 3 [3] of the Jordanian Nationality Law, prohibiting an Jew from becoming a Jordanian citizen, which is still in effect). It is perhaps an ironic ray of hope that dehumanizing, repressive laws such as The Jordanian Nationality Law, are sharply contrasted by the nearby legal status of 1 million permanent Arab Muslim citizens currently living within the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

Seeing the tittle and cover of the book, made me wonder: "The Forgotten Millions"- Which millions? Is it about millions in money value? Is it millions of people?

As I glanced at the index, and some of the articles, I found out it was about all the millions- It is the millions of property and money which the Arab Jews have lost as they had to leave their "mother countries" (which did not act in a very motherly manner to its Jewish people). The thousands of Arab Jews which had to leave to Israel/Palestine just because they were Jewish. This reminded me of other expulsions and ethnic cleansing several years earlier (1940's). This is the story, of the Jewish refugees and their children living now in Israel- altogether millions.

One cannot be blind to see the similarity to the Palestinian case. This brings the editor, Malka Hillel Shulewitz, to conclude that peace talks between Israel and Arab countries should include the compensation of the Jewish refuge as well. I see this as the weaker part of the book, for it is too bluntly political.

However, the main importance of the book is to see the complexity of the Middle East situation. In recent years, a load of books and articles have been published by (what are called) "New Historians". These "New Historians" shatter the Zionist myth, and give us a different Narrative; the narrative of the Palestinians forced out of their land and oppressed by Jewish society in Israel. I do not wish to argue with this narrative, for I am sure a war causes much sorrow to both sides and mostly to the ones that lost.

The Forgotten Millions tells us one of the stories of the Arab-Jewish conflict, from a different angle- the forced exodus of Jews. This does not under estimate the loss and sorrow of Arabs; it adds color to the "Black and White" story, which dominates the public discourse. Indeed, these millions of Jews have been forgotten. Their hard time and absorption in the new land was not easy at all, and yet, they were able to re-establish their lives. But again, this might be a good platform for dispute between "Narratives"...

This is a great book for the first time visitor to the Keys. It gives great tips on where to go to see the Keys from the locals veiw. It tells how to avoid the beaten paths (and tourists!) and see more of the history of the Keys. It has great reviews of the restaurants, entertainment, shopping and hotels available in all price ranges. The book gives great tips for any budget for travelling to the Keys. Its a must for any first time Keys visitor. Best book I've read about the travelling to the Keys.

Candace Leslie's Hidden Florida Keys And Everglades is a compact and reliable guide to the unique attractions and outdoor activities of Florida. Complete travel information is provided for sightseeing, lodging, dining, shopping, and urban nightlife. For the outdoor enthusiast there is sound advice and suggestions for camping, hiking, diving, canoeing, horseback riding, biking, and fishing. For the truly adventurous there are "hidden locales" where you can find such time capsules as the Historic Smallwood Store Museum, built in 1906 as a trading post for settlers and Seminole Indians; underwater attractions such as the San Pedro Underwater Archaeological Preserve where an 18th-century galleon went down in a hurricane; and Civil War sites such the Fort Zachary Taylor State Historic Site featuring the remains of an 1845 fort. If you are Florida bound, begin your trip with a copy of Hidden Florida Keys And Everglades.

This book was great bringing us to some of the most interesting spots in Florida. Highly recommended for the person looking to get off the beaten track.

I keep buying this book and giving them to our friends and family from Michigan and across the country. We don't go anywhere without our Hunt's. The descriptions are honest and comprehensive and we've never been disappointed. This is a must buy for anyone who visits or lives in Michigan.

This book is marvelous! We have used it in our family for vacations and weekend trips and it has pointed us to many interesting places that we never would have heard of otherwise. The book describes places clearly, with no hype--the way a friend would tell you about a place they had visited. Things that sound interesting turn out to be so, and the Hunts don't lead you to expect more than what you actually find. The Hunts describe natural features, parks, towns, museums, shopping, interesting businesses--I'm sure that almost anyone could find something of interest in this book.

Anyone who has discovered the wonders of under-rated Michigan will want to keep this frank and comprehensive guide handy on vacation. The big attractions as well as the often-missed backroad oddities are highlighted. Rather than keeping a narrow focus, this book manages to zero in on something for everyone--but without sounding like the brochures every chamber of commerce hands out to the gullible. I know because I live in one of Michigan's premiere tourist towns (at least, according to our CVB hand-outs...) and what the Hunts' book says is right on the money. And speaking of that, unlike some guides, this book talks alot about free attractions and gives prices for admissions, etc.. There's plenty of family-oriented info, too. I really can't say enough good things about how valuable a resource this book is for people who like to explore when they travel. Go buy it

We took a South Dakota vacation and found this book to be great reading in our preparation and planning. It covers everything from lodging to attractions to activities to history and on and on.

This book, in combination with "Exploring the Black Hills and Badlands: A Guide for..." helped us have a better vacation than I ever expected.

This is a GREAT book if you are visiting this area. It gives all sorts of information to make your trip more complete. It also gives background information and little insiders tips here and there. The only thing I would look elsewhere for is accomodations. It has good camping and B&B info but not nearly enough hotel and resort listings but you can get that anywhere. This book is worth it just for the INFORMATION included.

If you are going to the Badlands or the Black Hills, this book is a must have. On our recent trip, this book was an invaluable guide to getting around and I would highly recommend it. It saved us tons of time that would have been wasted just driving around.

This book is perfectly calculated to be read in the street on a hot day, holding the place lightly with a finger as one walks from one superb building to the next. Effortless learning and prose shine on them like a torch. The book has the humility to accept historical Islam on its own terms, uniquely explaining the Arabic texts written on walls already saturated with religious and political meaning. Is there any other guide quite like it and quite as good?

Cairo is one of the great cities in the world, and a walk through its Islamic areas transports you back hundreds, even thousands of years. This guide has been my bible as I've walked and walked and walked on many visits over the years. It illuminates what you see. Almost every block has something of interest, and it is invariably described lucidly in this guidebook.

Enough said -- if you want to walk through Islamic Cairo, you need this book. And if you don't want to walk, the book will make you want to!

Caroline Williams and her predecessors have put together a marvelous guide to most of the Islamic monuments, large and small, in Cairo. The book is divided by sections of the city and Williams suggests several "tours" visitors can give themeselves. I found it a valuable "tour guide" when I was exploring the city and an important reference when cataloging my slides after returning home. With detailed information about the history and finer architectural points of some two hundred monuments, as well as tips for getting around Cairo, this book (or its paperback version, ISBN 977-424-316-2) is a must-have for every Cairo-bound traveller!

This is an excellent account of the history of the Jewish state and it's conflicts with the Arab world, including the Palestinian issue.

The book has a Biblical foundation and provides an objective analysis of the present situation.

This book is well written and easy to understand. It provides an insight from both sides of the conflict and much of the account is based on the personal experience of one who has experienced much of the conflict first hand & who lives in Jerusalem. Someone who has also reported on the ongoing conflict for a major media network.

I share the author's interest and love for the Holy Land and a large percentage of his opinions. I have listened to David Dolan speak on the subject and he possesses a wealth of information, knowledge and experience.

Highly recommended.

The Middle East Crisis has been a major TV news topic for at least the last 30 years. Nevertheless, most Americans have no clue what is going on over there. We continue to try to understand the situation based on Western logic while not understanding that the involved parties have a perspective that does not fit Western logic, bargaining, or compromise. This book gives a terrific overview of the topic.

I found this book very interesting and quite informative. It gave a very objective and yet consise perspective on the modern developments in Israel and its continuing struggle with the Palestinian drive for Independence. I thought that the information on religious differences was also of much interest.

A great book! Packed full of great information for planning volunteer duty in Israel. I am planning my trip with a full understanding of the culture and facts of kibbutz lifestyle, all based on what I learned from the book. I highly recomend this book to any one planning on spending time in the middle east!

thinking about kibbutz? this is the book to get

gives a great overview on what to expect on any particular kibbutz you've been thinking about volunteering on.