The story of these trappists who died in Algeria in 1996 is a remarkable one that is told very well by the author. It is rare that such a sad event, the kidnapping and decapitation of these good, harmless men can generate such a feeling of hope and optimism. I lost a lot of my prejudices against Muslims reading this book. What a good and hospitable people most of the folk were. I cannot ever forget the reaction of the imams, refusing to condone such a murder, and even suffering death themselves rather than issue fetwas against innocent people. What a wonderful witness to the gospels these men showed. They were good neighbors who didn't deserve this kind of death. But none of the muslim victims of these terrorists deserved it either. The death of the monks brought attention to all the nameless people who had already died. And finally, I cannot read Christian de Cherge's final testiment without crying at the beauty of it: The forgiveness, the fraternal love shown even to his murderer. I will pray with brother Christian that, as he said, one day he and his murderer will meet with forgiveness before God, two good thieves.
Read this book!

This excellent book manages the remarkable task of juggling three important themes at once: the touching personal stories of a community of Trappist monks in Algeria, an uplifting investigation of what it means to be a true Christian and "live the Gospels", and finally an unraveling of the confusing and depressing story of Algeria's civil war. The framework for Kiser's book is the sad and unheard (in the US) story of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of seven Trappist monks in 1996 by a group of Islamic extremists. Using a myriad of French-language sources, including the diaries and journals of several of the monks and their personal letters, as well as interviews with family members and friends, and a trip to the monastery in Algeria, Kiser has crafted an fine work of history.

This history is built on his excellent presentation of contextual material. Clear prose takes the reader through brief histories of the formation of the Cistercian order, the Trappist schism, the history of Christianity in Algeria, French colonialism in Algeria, the Algerian revolution, the disastrous rule of the FLN, the rise of the Islamist movement, and the current civil war. Interwoven is the story of the monastery at Tibhirine in the Atlas Mountains and the friendship between the monks and their Muslim neighbors. Most of the French monks had some personal connection to Algeria (several had done military service there), and all felt that their calling demanded that they live a simple life amongst non-Christians, displaying the power of their faith through good works. Kiser takes a great deal of effort to highlight the areas of common ground between the inclusive Christianity of the monks and the Islam of their neighbors. He is also scrupulous in highlighting how the version of violent Islam that plagues Algeria arose from a combination of economic desperation and the influence of those who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and returned with Saudi backing to spread Wahabi Islam. Indeed, as Kiser points out, despite the horrific killings of the last decade, there was never a legitimate fatwa (religious decree) issued condoning the killing of noncombatants. While the story of the monk's deaths is certainly tragic, their tale also contains a definite sense of hope for future reconciliation.

Kiser has written a compelling and inspiring account that humanizes the tragedy of the monks of Tibhirine and of the Algerian civil war more generally. What I find particularly impressive is Kiser's refusal to exploit the subject matter, and his determination to dig below the surface level and take the drama of events to a deeper level. He provides the necessary information to situate the drama of the monks within a much larger context of politics, history, and culture, and finds hope in the midst of suffering. Kiser is aware that there are two rights and too many wrongs in Muslim-Christian relations. He affirms that, by remembering what is _right_ on both sides of the cultural divide, we can find sufficient energy, resolve, and inspiration to build bridges of understanding between two estranged religious and cultural traditions.

I would recommend this book to anyone who shares Kiser's desire to truly _understand_ what has "gone wrong" and what might "go right" in Muslim-Christian relations. If used in an academic classroom environment, Kiser's well-researched and thoughtful prose narrative would provide valuable supplementation to more standard textbook treatment of Muslim-Christian relations and the modern Middle East.

This short book packs much more of a whallop than all the self-indulgent, over-written books all too prevalent these days. I had just finished Atwood's The Blind Assasin (a book three times longer than it needed to be--assuming it needed to be at all) when I read this. What refreshment it was! It's not too short, but perfect in its economy.

It's the story of a wealthy, earnest woman seeking to do good in this troubled world by taking as her model the life and works of Graham Greene, who she met briefly and corresponded with excessively. (The aging author must have questioned the outcome of his life's work and resulting fame by this exhausting and passionate fan.) Gloria Emerson tells her story in a way that is funny, precise, and wise. A group of well-intentioned meddlars with lofty aims muddle through Algeria, attempting to liberate a politically incorrect writer. All are presented with clear eyed irony, precise and telling characterization. It's sufficient to say that their misguided innocence makes an even greater mess of things in Algeria. Read it and find more.

Loving Graham Greene made me want to return to the novels of the master. He would have been proud.

I really enjoyed this well-written, brief story. The tale of Molly Benson, the spacey Graham Greene-obsessed do-gooder and her ill-advised trip to Algeria is entertaining and amusing. Gloria Emerson has a knack of drawing characters with obvious and amusing flaws, without making her narrative or characterization seem obvious, contrived or hackneyed. This is a short novel, one that you can enjoy in a few gulps, but you won't get the sense of being cheated. Molly is quite a character. She met Graham Greene, briefly, once and from that meeting believed, in her own mind that she and Greene were quite close. After his death, she believes he would have wanted her to lead an expedition to Algeria and she drags a couple of her friends there. Molly lives in a world of delusion. You'll read about her and think, "This woman is a little nuts, the world is simply not as she imagines it". Her life is both funny and sad. Funny in that her delusions lead her to do amusing things, sad in that she has the delusions at all. I think, though, that most will find slivers of themselves in her, for who doesn't act believing in something that just is not true, or won't happen, out of sheer hopefulness. Emerson has given us an amusing character study and a very well-written novel. Enjoy.

In a tapestry of made-up minds, honest reporters live at risk. Gloria Emerson was such a reporter in Vietnam and in Gaza. She pays affectionate tribute to perhaps the greatest thriller writer in "Loving Graham Greene" by sending quirky heiress Molly Benson, the female protagonist Greene never attempted, to a doomed Algeria to hire bodyguards for honest journalists. Like many Greene characters, Benson is a decent person over her head amid evil, whose good works do harm. Her reporter's eye and ear won Emerson's "Winners and Losers" the National Book Award with telling details like the GI who looked in a mirror and said, "I had no idea who that was." Her writing skills turn a clever conceit into a brilliant novel. The determined Molly Benson and her companions are richly-drawn characters in a sparse world of countervailing menaces, the police state versus Islamic fundamentalism. The civil war in the shadows tightens its noose as the innocents look for ways to save the outspoken. The naïve, half-informed Pyle in Greene's "The Quiet American" was "impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance." Emerson's Benson has a capacity to understand there is a great deal she doesn't understand. She's an ironic, irritating heroine - a tall, middle-aged, ferociously liberal woman whose brother Harry was a reporter martyred in El Salvador. Molly knows every book Greene ever wrote, down to the names of the dogs, met him once by chance, pestered him with letters and undertakes her mission to carry on his spirit and Harry's after their deaths. Emerson writes with a scalpel dipped in ink, every detail as perfect as the story and characters. This funny, literate thriller is tribute to the power of the word to inspire action in the face of despair.

There are few things that inspire me more than a true story of a child of God who is faithful in the face of success and apparent failure. I see the reality of this woman's walk with God to be the challenge and encouragement. The accounts of her passion, travels, and encounters challenge my perspective on missions. I don't believe I had a real grasp on missions until I read this book. The quotations of her own journals and other writings bring a special feeling of knowing Lilias by the end of the book. This is a book I highly encourage all believers to read.

I am a voracious reader of non-fiction (particularly Christian non-fiction), but out of thousands of books I have read, this biography captivated me like no other. Perhaps because I am a writer and artist, I could identify with Lilias and her passions. Ultimately, however, this is a story of adventure, sacrifice, surrender and uncompromising dedication to Jesus Christ, all set against the exotic backdrop of Algeria. I can't wait to meet Lilias in heaven and tell her how she inspired me. Of course, I also look forward to meeting the authors someday because they brought Lilias to life. The narrative is as lovely as Lilias' art!

This book does indeed weave a challenging and interesting tale of a pioneeer missionary, who for the sake of the gospel left a comfortable and gracious victorian life for a life of sacrifice in the northern deserts of Africa, among Muslim tribemen.It is carefully crafted and includes some prints of Lilias' own artwork, which from what can be seen, is lovely.I wish a book could be devoted to more prints and more about Lilias' travels!

This Algerian Jewish folktale stresses the importance of keeping the Sabbath. A young impoverished widow lives with her five children, struggling all week to make a nice Shabbat each Friday night. News comes that her late husband's uncle has died and left the family a fortune. But someone will have to cross the desert to get it. A Bedouin chief agrees to take her eldest son, and to stop for Shabbat on the way.

When the chieftain reneges on his promise to stop for Shabbat, the boy refuses to break the Sabbath and stays alone in the desert, to light his candles and bless his meager wine and bread. As the sun sets, a lion appears to protect him.

...This book brings the mystery and joy of Shabbat home to children, who delight in hearing the tale repeatedly. Alyssa A. Lappen

This book is a fun way for children to learn about standing up for what they believe. Would be good for children of all faiths to read.

My kids love this book, and want to hear it over and over again!

And I love it because it teaches the importance of maintaining one's convictions.

I recommend it very highly!!!

Sahara Overland: A Route & Planning Guide is the first truly comprehensive guidebook to one of the world's most compelling and challenging environments, North Africa's Sahara Desert. Ranging from the Moroccan Atlas Mountains to the Red Sea, Sahara Overland is ideal for Saharan travelers whether for a weekend excursion, a week long vacation, or a season spanning safari. Thirty-five detailed itineraries are available, covering more than 15,000 miles through nine countries: Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Egypt. The only Saharan guidebook covering all aspects of traveling the great desert by vehicle, Sahara Overland provides tips on how not to get lost, and what to do when things go wrong. Chris Scott's informative, "traveler friendly" text is enhanced with fifty maps and more than 300 b&w and color photographs. If you are planning a trip through the Sahara, begin with acquiring and throughly reading Chris Scott's Sahara Overland.

Chris Scott's book was worth the wait. I've been exploring the deserts of the United States and Mexico for decades, and my wife and I plan to ship our vehicle to Morocco and explore the Sahara soon. This book has left no question unanswered.

Chris's approach is always engaging, but exhaustive where necessary. He isn't afraid to be honest in equipment choices. For example, since he is from the U.K. I expected the vehicle selection chapter to be a Tom Sheppard-esque sermon about the perfection of the Land Rover. Instead, while pointing out the strengths of Land Rovers, he quite bluntly states that anyone needing the utmost in reliability should buy a Toyota Land Cruiser instead. The section on vehicle preparation is full of good, practical advice.

The route descriptions are excellent (and you can visit the author's web site for updates). However, I would recommend this book strongly to anyone considering traveling by vehicle in any desert in the world--there's that much information in it.

This guide is simply fantastic, it is amazingly accurate, and makes traveling across the Sahara so incredably easy! It is truly a fabulous guide, and comes highly reccommended!

The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 by Hugh Roberts (Senior Research Fellow of the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science) is a close and meticulous study of the recent violence that has wracked Algeria. This impressive history eschews oversimplifications reducing the conflict to simply Islamists vs. a secular state, or the generals vs. the common people. Carefully examining the makeup and motivating forces for the Islamists, the Berberists, various factions in the army and in the general regime, The Battlefield is a compelling dissection of the heart of bloodshed. A work of considerable scholarship but one which is easily accessible by the non-specialist general reader, The Battlefield is highly recommended for students of 20th Century Algerian history.

Hugh Roberts is the leading anglophone expert on Algeria and this book will cause you to question all of your pre-conceived and half-baked notions of what has been going on in Algeria during the last decade and a half. Roberts is a passionately committed scholar who questions everything and comes up with original and serious critiques of what passes for scholarship and with fascinating reflections that will reward your curiousity and cause you to think deeply about why we understood so little about Algeria.

I thought this book was excellent. It was extremely helpful as far as taking a piece of work that I found difficult to read, and not only making it understandable and interesting, but also giving it meaning and purpose. I now comprehend the book's importance as a historical piece of literature much better than I could before. I found the biography of Casmus' life to be well-rounded and captivating, without needing to read an entire book about him! I highly recommend this book for any student of literature who wants to better understand Casmus and/or his writing of The Plague.

Jesse Cunningham catalogues a broad, well-researched collection of essays that address readers on a variety of levels. Camus biographers Germaine Bree and Gaetan Picon introduce the work with insightful, easily understood discussions on theme and allegory. The other contributing writers, (John Cruickshank, Derek Parker, David R. Ellison, Brian Masters, Rachel Bespaloff, Jennifer Waelti-Walters, Patrick McCarthy, Allen Thiher, David Sprintzen, Bernard C. Murchland, and Robert R. Brock), tackle a variety of subjects with pertinence and wit. I highly recommend this work as an insightful read and a stepping stone to further research.

Set at the end of the French-Algerian War in the early 60's, Two Crosses struggles with the reality of living out one's faith when situations and people aren't perfect, which is always the case. You won't find Christian cliches or easy answers, but you will find a book chocked full of little- known facts about Protestantism, and Hugenots in particular. Catholicism and the Jewish faith are treated with dignity as well. Elizabeth Musser is a missionary in southern France and is knowledgeable of the people and the area. I have her e- mail, should you like it, and I can vouch for her character! A sequel, entitled Two Testaments, is due out in the next year.

Action takes place at end of French- Algerian war- a tangle of the horrors of war,a love story, a testing of faith and several sub plots with unexpected endings. Good reading with more to follow

Algeria 1830-2000: A Short History directly addresses the history and root causes of the deadly, long-term civil war that has killed at least 80,000 people out of this nation of 28 million. Written with painstaking detail about the 1954-1962 Algerian civil war and the nation's history since its independence, Algeria 1830-2000 features college-level narration and analysis supplemented by tables, a very convenient acronym list, a 26-page chronology, and an index. Benjamin Stora (Professor of History at the University of Paris, Saint Denis) has written a new introductory chapter on Algeria's colonial period (1830-1954) and revised the final section with up-to-date information, making Algeria 1830-2000 a clear, detailed, rigorously factual, and up-to-date account of this troubled nation from 1830 down to the present day.

William Quandt has produced a brief look at the Algerian crisis that will give the reader with a time deficit a chance bone up quickly and accurately.

Between Ballots & Bullets by William Quandt is an excellent and exhaustive study of Algeria's transition from authoritarianism. The book is split into two parts: political history and political analysis. In Part I, the reader gets an excellent political history of the country, beginning with the struggle for independence from France all the way to aftermath of the 1997 elections (the book was published in 1998). In Part II, Quandt offers contending "perspectives" for analyzing Algeria's plight. He details cultural, socioeconomic and political explanations for the situation, while taking care never to dismiss the power of human agency and contextualized choice. In this book review, I will briefly summarize the book, review Quandt's style, and propose future implications for Algeria based on the knowledge I have gained.
It almost seems repetitive to give a summary of this book, because Quandt is extremely concise. He begins with a political account of the Algerian struggle for independence. He observes,

...the revolution that was launched November 1, 1954 was not only against the French, but also against the existing political institutions that Algerians had forged over the previous generation. In its origins, the Algerian revolution was antipolitics and antiparty. (18)

This observation is important because it helps the reader understand the importance of nationalism in the revolution. The Algerians did not fight with a detailed governance plan in their back pocket. Rather, they fought for a chance to establish themselves as independent people.
After discussing the Revolution and its rhetorical emphasis on unity, Quandt moves into the Boumedience Era. He notes that Algeria's first president, Ben Bella, lacked an institutional base of support and spent much of his time in office manipulating factions against each other. Ben Bella quietly faded into the background and Boumediene arose as the stable and rather "faceless" leader. He downgraded the FLN (the party credited with winning independence) in importance and suppressed any emerging opposition to his regime. Indeed, after 1968, there was very little internal opposition. During the 1970s, his regime had an Islamic cultural orientation but functioned in a secular socialist manner. There was definitely not much emphasis on a transition to democracy, but "Boumedience, at least, had brought stability to a country that had known far too much political violence" (29).
In the next chapter, Quandt explains that there was inevitable pressure to change, and Boumediene, as an authoritarian ruler, was unable to enact it. Chadli Benjedid became president in 1979, and long-suppressed demands for change came with the Berber spring of 1980. This initial movement for the rights of Berber-speaking people gave rise to other political movements, the most significant being the Algerian Islamic Movement. Beginning in 1982, the Islamic Movement took up arms and gained momentum, though for the most part the stability of the existing order kept protestors at bay. This all changed in 1988, when "the bottom fell out of the oil market." The rentier state was in trouble.
Quandt writes, "the mass protests of October 1988 proved to be one of those turning points that define a country's political trajectory for years to come. It was a nationwide youth revolt, but Islamic activists soon took charge. The military was called in and violence ensued. Hundreds of young Algerians were killed in the first use of the Algerian military against its own people.
As disturbing as this scene was, Quandt notes that it could have been a dramatic turn toward political expression and eventually democracy. Indeed, in 1989 reform-minded allies of Chadli drafted a new constitution. At least on paper, it created three distinct branches of government and guaranteed individual liberties--including what was to soon become a very significant free press. The army was supposed to now be above politics, and a significant new political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) challenged the government on a plethora of issues. Many young unemployed and disillusioned men joined this group. Through political mediums such as strikes and the 1991 elections (in which the FIS received about twice the number of votes as the FLN in the first round), the FIS established itself as the new power in Algeria. In June of 1991, however, the army stepped in yet again (it had stepped in during the strike and arrested FIS leaders) and showed itself to be right in the middle of politics-certainly not above it.
In 1991 the army cancelled the constitutionally mandated second round of elections and forcefully removed both Chadli and the FIS from power. Quandt explains the army's motives well:

Many in the military had fought for Algeria's independence and genuinely felt that they had a legitimate role to play in the political life of the country. The FIS was a threat to all that they had fought for and, like the Turkish military, they would not stand by and watch the principles of the state be trampled. (60-61).

Thus, the military took over the state and political violence and terrorism was the norm for most of the nineties. Within months, the FIS was declared illegal. The leader appointed by the military, Boudiaf, was assassinated, and thousands of ordinary Algerians lost their lives in the chaos. Quandt writes, "The inability-or unwillingess-of the state to provide basic security was shocking" (75). Many Algerians emigrated to other nations.
Thus, the political history of Algeria is a complex and sometimes sad one. Quandt's book covers it so well because he understands that there is hope for the country. It has experimented with liberalization and might just be able to make it work. After all, nobody really expected Algeria to rebel against France in the first place, much less win a war of independence. Quandt's book is good because it presents this history in a very detailed fashion (Part I), and then it presents various perspectives to clarify the events and give insight to the future (Part II). An alternate format, like an interwoven mixture of history and analysis, might be very confusing to the average reader.

Ballots and Bullets is only one of several books I have read dealing with Algerian Politics recently, and it amazed me how Quandt was able to grasp the fundamental themes of the transition Algeria has made in the past years. Quandt has a perspective on the subject that had never entered my mind before, and he explains it in the most comprehensive manner possible.