Wisconsin is lucky to have Zane Williams so he can capture our lovely state. Another book that captures Wisconsin's beauty is The Spirit of Door County with photographs by Darryl Beers. Darryl is to Door what Zane is to Wisconsin!!! Thanks to both of you!!!

Please note that the author of this book is Tracy Will, not Charles Calhoun, and that the photgrapher is Zane Williams

Until I read this book, I thought I knew a lot about Jewish history. Was I wrong! This book is highly readable and totally fascinating. The author was an Iranian Jew who used original sources--Jewish, Iranian/Persian, and Arabic---in compiling the three-volume work from which this book grew. Written with no European bias, before political correctness took its toll of honesty, this book is a real eye-opener. I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to understand Jewish history, the present Israel-Arab situation, and the roots of the terror war now engulfing the world.

This is a fascinating history of the oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora. In an initial chapter,the author makes a credible case that the ten lost tribes of Israel are really the Jews of Kurdistan and other northern provinces of ancient Persia. Since Babylon was a Persian province for a thousamd years, the Babylonia talmud was really a product of Persia's Jewish community and Persia was the center of Jewish thought for a thousand years. The book also chronicles what life was really like for Jews under Islam and completely undercuts the myth that Jews were protected from persecution, mass murder and forced conversions in Islamic countries. The Jewish experience in Persia is put in the context of general Persian history in each chapter. The role of the clerics in state rule is amply illustrated and makes understandable the current Islamic regime in Iran and why the populace has accepted the rule of the Islamicists. This is an important book for those who want to understand Jewish history and for those who want to know how religious minorities are treated in Islamic countries.

This book is a fascinating study of the calendars of ancient Mesopotamia, from the third millennium B.C. to the first millennium B.C. Each section begins with a synopsis of what is known about the calendar from that place and time (e.g. Nippur's calendar versus Ur's), and then launches into a month-by-month list of the festivals associated with that month (complete with the known name of the month). The final chapter focuses of festival themes, and is of general interest.

This is a fascinating book, containing a wealth of information that I didn't realize was available. Sadly, the book is written in a somewhat dry and academic tone, which means that it is not good bedtime reading. That said, though, this book offers a fascinating look into the Mesopotamian's view of the year, and what it offered to them. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the daily life in ancient Mesopotamia.

I greatly enjoyed reading Prof. Cohen's book. It is certainly technical and of special interest to students of the ancient near east, but it is also quite lucid and accessible. The author has mastered and explained an immense amount of information about ancient religion and sacred times. This is an interesting way to learn about religious practices in ancient Mesopotamia and Palestine.

Enjoyed reading my friend John's (and fellow writer),book on his African Experiences.

His wife Adeline did a great job too.

Dr. Hult has written a truly remarkable story of life as a missionary pediatrician in East Africa. His writing is at all times clear and concise. He brings to life an era in this former British colony then called Tanganyika. For those of us who were there, and who recall the people and places he writes about, it's a nostalgic trip into the past. But for those who weren't there, this book paints pictures that portray humor and pathos, successes and failures, adventure and routine, life and death in a primitive African culture. A must-read for everyone interest in missions, African culture, or just the people themselves.

This book documents a lifestyle that we can only know through writings and recollections, mostly by English expatriates and scholars. The houses themselves are gradually falling into decay, which is shameful, but which appears to be the fate of so many great architectural treasures of the past. I was charmed by the magnificence that one can sense (through the photographs), however dimmed by present squalor, and resolved that if I could, somehow, I would try to recreate the feeling; I know that's quite silly but even so it would be marvelous to have a fountain right by one's door and great trees growing inside one's living quarters. I loved the black, red, and white horizontal stripes and the mother-of-pearl-inlaid furniture, the inlaid Arab designs, the 20' ceilings and the beautiful arches. I also loved the recollections of Isabel and Richard Burton, and Jane Digby, these people were triumphantly confident and strode through life with none of the fright and nerves that we contemporary readers seem to have...and rightly so. I loved this book, and hopefully it will assist in the preservation of the great houses of Old Syria.

Brigid Keenan's informative and highly recommended text comprising Damascus: Hidden Treasures Of The Old City, is enhanced throughout with 214 illustrations and photographs (171 in color) by Tim Beddow. This superb introduction to the architectural grandeur of Damascus incudes descriptions of individual houses and the people who built and lived in them. The amazing photographs reveal the facades, courtyards, alleyways , fountains and amazing interiors behind unassuming walls will delight students of Islamic culture, architecture, history, and lifestyles.

I picked up this book because I was interested in reading about Iran in the 1940s and 50s. I was pleasantly surprised what an outstanding writer Ramazani is, she has an adept pen and is a wonderful storyteller. I was amazed how candid she was, how much personal and family history she divulges.

I recommend this book highly to the Iranian diaspora throughout the world, Nesta Ramazani gives a truly intimate account of her own journey and the mid-20th century history of Iran.

Nesta Ramazani's The Dance Of The Rose And The Nightingale is the personal testimony of a young woman who grew up in Iran during the 1940s, the daughter of an English Christian mother and an Iranian Zoroastrian father. Reflecting a personal viewpoint of the meeting of different faiths, as well as the daily difficulties Iran experienced as its government tried to compel its traditional society and culture to modernize, The Dance Of The Rose And The Nightingale is a captivating, autobiographical life story and especially recommended reading for students of 20th Century Iranian history.

Tara Kai's debut novel, Dar Es Salaam is the story of Tatum who is transitioning from a fanciful adolescent girl to a knowledgeable woman. Tatum travels with her family on vacation to the Tanzanian capital city of Dar es Salaam where she finds herself drawn to Mohammed (called Mo), a 40-year-old Indian man and friend of her stepfather. Tatum's attractions evolves into desire, then obsession, culminating in a resolute and emotional manipulation of the older man by the much younger girl. A deeply engaging, ultimately satisfying, highly recommended novel, Dar Es Salaam is deftly written, with the characters truly coming alive within the mind's eye of the reader.

Tara Kai manages to weave the world of illusion with the hard facts of reality in "Dar es Salaam." It is a wonderful work, detailing the mystifying beauty of Africa through the eyes of an adolescent 14-year-old, Tatum. Tatum's train-of-thoughts are innocently humorous, (particularly because the novel is written in the voice of a 14-year-old), and I think Kai is being critical on the commercialized notion of feminity and sex in popular women's magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Seventeen.

Here we see how silly the love advices and how ludricrious magazines, geared towards women to tempt them to drastically change their appearance, really are. One almost feels sad for Tatum, and the characters are so real, that you feel that you want to grab Tatum by the collar and shake her into reality. Life-like and humourous, I recommend this book for anyone who loves fiction, and especially for those people who need a wake-up call to realize that there is more to life than the fine, glossy print of magazines.

This book is a "must-read" for those seeking to better understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the personal affect of oppression, in general. The author is a Palestinian who shares poignant personal stories of what it means to be Palestinian, while interweaving insightful political and policy comments concerning Israel, Zionism, and U.S. foreign policy. Toubbeh tells his story powerfully, with sensitivity, honesty and at times,scathing humor, and stinging sarcasm. Additionally, this is a well-researched, well-documented informative offering.

"Day of the Long Night" seems a perfect title in reference to experiencing first hand, upon reading the book, the referenced Nakba (catastrophe). We experience this both through the author's teenaged perspective and through the lens of his subsequent 50 years of accumulated wisdom, eloquently expressed with insight and humor.

This book, besides being an invaluable first-hand account of the Armenian Genocide, is actually quite readable and entertaining. Written by an American missionary living in Turkey in 1915, it is an insightful chronology of the events that unfolded in his town, Harpoot. The great thing is, Riggs is an American and quite unbiased. Turks and Armenians alike in many ways annoy and befuddle him. But he knows the country well, and describes that it was quite obvious that there was a centrally-planned massacre going on. The book is written in so much detail--of how the deportations and massacres unfolded--that it is hard to believe that there are some who question the existence of the Armenian Genocide. This is probably the best primary account of the Armenian Genocide out there, because it's not told through the eyes of one survivor, but through the eyes of someone who saw all of the events unfolding before him. This book is must read for historians and experts on the subject and is certainly a "thorn in the side" for revisionists who claim that the wholesale massacre of Armenians didn't take place.

I hate to say this about a book that deals with massacres, but this is a funny, sad book. The author has no love for Armenians or Turks. He just tells it like he sees it. I had to laugh when the Turkish officer beat up the Kurdish conscript for defecating on the street, and the Kurd snapped to attention, saluted and resumed the squatting position. Turns out that he didn't speak a word of Turkish. Turks are from Mars and Kurds are from Venus?

On a more serious note, this is great storytelling. We get to know the people Rev. Riggs knew. We get to learn their terrible fate with him. We see him desparately trying to get the bigshots he plays cards with to spare the lives of the condemned race. I've read quite a few memoirs, and this is definitely the best.

The book is apparently taken from an archive that includes numerous other reports about the Armenian massacres. The rest of the reports are shorter, and they are compiled in James Barton, "Turkish Atrocities."

Like Helen Keller, Taha Hussain overcame the challenges of his blindness to be an inspiration to everyone who knew him. Born in 1889 in a small village in Egypt, the 7th of 13 children, and blinded in his early childhood by a mistake of the local barber (and village surgeon!), one would expect Taha Hussein to become just another statistic. Instead, his brilliant mind led him to receive the highest levels of education in Egypt, followed by a PhD from the Sorbonne University in France, and achieve wide recognition and honors as a writer, faculty member, dean, minister of education, and a Nobel prize nominee in literature. There are few human beings who overcome adversity of such magnitude. Taha Hussein's autobiography is unique and sometimes controversial, but certainly an inspiration to anyone who reads it. This edition, which includes all 3 parts of his biography now joined in one book, is well worth it and a must read.

This is a must read for those interested in Egypt and Egyptian culture. It is an absolute classic, wonderfully written and well translated. The story of a poor blind boy with incomparable talent and motivation, It is also a beautiful love story, cross cultural marriage, conflict between civilizations and the push and pull between the sacred and the secular. Taha Hussien rose from very poor and humble origin to the heights of Egyptian society.

Each of the three parts of this book was translated by a different person, as a result it takes a bit of time to get adjusted to the new style as well as a new phase of the life of Taha Hussien.

The first part of the book, specially with the third person style can get a bit tedious but if you perceiver through that you will get the double reward of enjoying the book and learning more about this truly unique man.