American Woman in Baghdad

American Woman by Susan Choi

The bones of this story are eerily similar to the Patty Hearst saga in the 70s-- rich girl kidnapped by "revolutionaries" turns to their side. That said, I liked this book because of that and in spite of it. Jenny Shimada is on the run from the law and agrees to harbor the fugitives who have the rich captive. Jenny has been evading arrest for several years, and it's interesting to see how her attitude differs from the other characters, who are still full of fire and ideas. The characters are compelling, there's a lot of suspense, and I don't seem to read a lot of books set in the 1970s, so I liked that too.


Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Continuing in my Iraq/Afghanistan reading, I picked up this book after it was recommended to me. It's a nonfiction account written by a Washington Post reporter who spent several years in Baghdad. "Truth is stranger than fiction" is a statement that comes to mind when I think about this book. Someone in the book says that the American occupation of Iraq was a series of missed opportunities and that is illustrated thousand fold in scenario after scenario. I'd heard some of these stories before-- unqualified people appointed to important posts just because of their political affiliation or connections-- but it was good (though painful) to get more details. This was a hard book to read, because there is an overwhelming question of "what could have been?" throughout the chapters. It's well written and compelling, and I recommend it, but you have my warning that it might make you want to cry from frustration about how botched things were.