"[Yemen Chronicle] focuses on the themes of violence, honor, and hospitality in Arabic tribal society, and cultural misunderstandings and the efforts of a nonnative to be accepted in another culture . . . I highly recommend [Yemen Chronicle] to students of anthropology, Yemen, the Middle East, and anyone who has tried to live in a foreign culture."—David M. Witty, The Journal of Military History

"Harrowing. The reader is drawn in, in effect eavesdropping on a casual conversation among killers . . . Readers who can get beyond their (justified) initial horror will find a wealth of detail here about the genocide."—Alison Des Forges, The Washington Post Book World

"'Why keep on?' asks Claudine Kayitesi, a Tutsi survivor living in relative peace in Nyamata, Rwanda. Her question is not a philosophical one, though that would be understandable given what she has experienced—rape, displacement, the murder of a sister and many others. Rather, her query is directed at the persistent questions of the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld, who has returned to the war-torn landscape he wrote about in two previous books, The Machete Season and Life Laid Bare, to speak again to survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Why Hatzfeld keeps on asking questions is among the many thought-provoking issues at the heart of his new book, The Antelope's Strategy. Seven years after his reporting for Machete Season, Hatzfeld finds a much-changed Rwanda: The terrors of war have been replaced by an awkward—and sometimes dangerous—atmosphere of forced reconciliation. Some Hutu prisoners have been released or have returned from exile to live among the families of those they killed. 'Not one prisoner came asking for forgiveness,' says Kayitesi. A Hutu ex-convict notes, 'I was charged, I was convicted, I was pardoned. I did not ask to be forgiven.' Hatzfeld captures this tension gracefully, weaving lengthy interview excerpts with his own artfully written observations. The result is a book that illustrates vividly the thorny realities that accompany survival and appeasement. 'People are living peacefully, but actually they are avoiding one another,' Kayitesi comments in the book's final pages. 'We'll be humble and nice, we'll share, we'll cooperate as we should. But believing them is unthinkable.'"—Nora Krug, The Washington Post

"Along comes Amin Maalouf with his lovely, complex memoir, Origins, to remind us that Arab identity is as fluid, unsettled and ever-changing as the Mediterranean Sea where it kisses the shores of Lebanon, his country of origin, and France, where he has lived for the last 30 years . . . Maalouf doesn’t only want to illuminate family history or amplify stories barely whispered for a hundred years; instead, he strives to reveal the fecund variety of his own family, of Arab life and history, of history itself. In doing so, he offers a lesson in the value of impermanence and shifting sands . . . Maalouf wants nothing more than to unwind the long scarf of memory and history, not to make a claim, but in celebration of human dignity, endeavor and 'wanderers who have lost their way.' He is one of that small handful of writers, like David Grossman and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who are indispensable to us in our current crisis."—Jonathan Wilson, The New York Times Book Review

"Tyrant, killer, buffoon: Idi Amin was unforgettable. But his victims have largely been forgotten. Andrew Rice rescues one man’s memory, gives him a face and a voice and lets him speak for a multitude of the dead. This is reporting at its best—as gripping as any murder mystery, but far more important, because every painful word is true."—Robert Guest, former Africa editor of The Economist and author of The Shackled Continent

"Fascinating . . . the cartoonist is in top form throughout . . . A story soaked to the marrow with heartbreaking insights . . . One of the best long-form comics of this decade, and Sacco’s greatest work to date.”—The Comics Reporter

"In an incisive and eloquent new book, the Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid tells the story of a man named Sabah, who is accused of being a United States informer in the town of Thuluyah . . . Sabah's story is only one of many tragic stories to be found in Night Draws Near, a book that gives a harrowing portrait of life in postwar Iraq and the fallout that the American war has had on ordinary Iraqi civilians . . . Night Draws Near . . . also provides a damning account of the Bush administration's failure to prepare adequately for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and of its missteps and miscalculations in the wake of toppling Saddam Hussein."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Elliot reports on the 'double life' of the Persians he meets, who unanimously denounce the ruling mullahs. One insists that you're nobody in Iran if you haven't been imprisoned; another rolls his eyes at the author's obsessive trawling of mosques, protesting, 'People will think I'm with a fanatic.' The book is replete with historical arcana . . . ruminations on the 'turbulent calligraphies' of Islamic architecture, and labyrinthine footnotes . . . Elliot is a travel writer of the old school: untethered to an itinerary, eager to be led astray, and as ardent an observer of the experience of traveling as of his destination."—The New Yorker