Catching Up With Books I Recently Read

In the past 2 weeks I believe it's been now, I've finished two more books. I found both of these books to be difficult to put down. I never got around to posting them for no good reason so I decided to do it now. I'm not going to go in great detail reviewing them but I'll give you the basic premise.

The first one is "The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family".



This book looks at the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in 2004 in Iraq and their families back home. I found this book very informative, very good, and very sad.

The second book that I just finished is "Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among The Youth of The Middle East".



This book was really interesting. Basically the author described his travels through Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq (I may have missed one or two). He spoke with youth in said countries about their feeling on war, radical islam, democracy, and general outlook and feelings about life and the world in general. He centered mainly on their feelings about their situations, hopes, and lives. The conclusion that he portrayed is that in many cases they aren't so different from us. They don't in many cases, hate Americans and often they envy and wish for a way of life more like ours. He describes his ideas for dialogue and possibilities for working together toward change. Though my views are far less optimistic about the chances of this making much difference, I do not doubt the truth in his statements. The one thing I do disagree with is that it's the west that needs to bend more to them in order to achieve the end goal. I also think his travels and information obtained were slightly restrained in many ways and not portraying as large a picture as he wants us to believe. None the less, I still do recommend this book and I really did enjoy it a lot.