The Last Girl - Nadia Murad

I don't know that I can hate ISIS more than I already did before I began this book, but it certainly does fuel my hatred for them. This book is the story of Nadia, a young Yazidi girl whose village of Kocho was taken by ISIS and she was captured, along with the other young women from her village after watching her brothers be shot, and sold to ISIS militants as sex slaves. I cannot say that it surprised me to read about the sort of things ISIS does to the people they capture, but it does provide a vivid firsthand account of what it is like to be on the receiving end of such treatment. And, as expected, it is truly horrific. 

This book, I think, is important for people to read if not just to inform themselves of what ISIS is constantly doing in Iraq and how the people there are in desperate need of help. It is a tragic, horrifying story, but it is also a story of hope, courage, strength and so much more. 

It's not a book that you can sit back and enjoy, in fact most of the book will be impossible to enjoy, but it is definitely one that should be read. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

The Book of Esther - Emily Barton

I selected this book to review because it seemed full of things I like - historical fiction, WWII, steampunk, science fiction - and a blurb from the New York Times Book Review said it was "as addicting as a Jewish Game of Thrones" and I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones so that definitely made this book sound like a must read.

Well, after having finished it, unless a Jewish Game of Thrones would be extremely dull, then this book is certainly not anywhere near as addicting as a Jewish Game of Thrones would be. I am not trying to be mean here, but the only word I have to describe this book after reading it is boring. I just found it incredibly dull form beginning to end. And I cut it some slack at the beginning because sometimes books need some time to get things going but even after it was supposed to be exciting it was still boring. I ended up skimming the last few chapters more than reading them because I just wanted to be done with it.

And I'm not saying Emily Barton is a bad writer, she's not. I have no complaints about her writing style. She's just a boring story teller in my opinion. I didn't care for the story and I didn't care for any of the characters. I'm not Jewish and I'm not too educated on the religion, but that part of the story seemed very well researched and written. 

Another problem I had with the story was the lack of explanation. There was simply too much in the book, in my opinion, that begged for explanations that never happened. The random throwing in of words in other languages without really translating them got a little annoying and I needed more explanation about the whole deal with the mechanical horse (like where'd it come from? Why mechanical horses? Why not real ones?) and the whole situation with Amit. It just left you asking more questions than it answered and I didn't like that.

So, overall, I really didn't enjoy this book but I can see why some people would. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

The Roanoke Girls - Amy Engel

It took me a long time to get into this book. Many of the reviews I saw before starting had a lot to say about the fast paced beginning and how quickly it drew you in, but that was not my experience with this book. For me, the beginning seemed to drag a little and, honestly, once the book did get going, I was not that impressed with it.

The premises of the book was intriguing and it was written in such a way that made you want to read to the end to figure out exactly what was going on, even though I had kind of figured out what the deal was about halfway through, but you still want to get the end to see if you're right, and, in my case, hoping you're wrong. 

But that's really the best thing I can say about this book. I mean, some of the characters were okay but I really didn't care for most of them and I found the protagonist, Lane, to be extremely annoying. Her little dilemma with her love interest was a big, meaningless mess that was aggravating to read about. It got to the point where it seemed like the last half of the book was just them having sex. This girl has to have sex with this guy because she likes him, then she has to have sex with him because she doesn't like him and she has to have sex with him to prove she doesn't like or care about. These adults have no self control and it almost made me want to stop reading the book altogether. However, the main plot line is intriguing, as well as disturbing and it does really get interesting and intense during the last few chapters.



I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Author's Website: amyengel.net

The United States of Jihad - Peter Bergen

I liked this book well enough until I was reading the last half of the last chapter. This book is very well researched and is extremely informative, but once the author started jutting in his own opinions, which were just opinions for which he didn't offer much support other than more of his own opinions (which were all political opinions, I might add), was when it got super annoying to read. Thankfully, though, that was not the entire book. Just a good portion of the last chapter and the epilogue.

The United States of Jihad examines the history of terrorism in the west, particularly focusing on the 9/11 attacks and terrorism since that time. It illustrates very well the threat of lone wolf terrorism here in the United States and goes through every successful terrorist attack (and even some unsuccessful ones) on American soil since 9/11 pointing out that every successful attack was carried achieved through "lone wolf terrorism", though 9/11 itself was not.

Reading this books shows how drastically our criminal justice system and government changed after 9/11. Before the attacks, there was really no special protocol or policies pertaining to acts of terrorism. The attacks on September 11, 2001 woke our whole country up to the threat of terrorism and prompted the creation of special departments dedicated to preventing and dealing with terrorism at both local and national levels. Though we have come a long way in our response to terrorism, we still have a long way to go. The book highlights cases in which the FBI missed crucial information when investigating potential terrorists and even dismissed cases and concerns that were raised to them about people who ended up committing fatal terrorist attacks.

It must also be considered, however, that the FBI receives numerous tips and most of the tips they receive will not lead them to a potential terrorist and it is impossible for them to prevent all lone wolf terrorist attacks and to identify everyone who is a potential threat, although they have succeeded in some cases.

Another thing the book does well is show the significant impact social media now has on lone wolf terrorism. Most terrorists get their inspiration and motives from people they speak to on social media. This is also where they learn how to evade suspicion and create weapons. Because social media is the biggest aid to American terrorists who, though the internet, are able to communicate directly with ISIS members and supporters, it makes it impossible for law enforcement to be able to identify and monitor everyone who would commit an attack.

These are all things I think the book does well, but there are things about it, mainly in his analysis, that force me to drop this from a four star rating to a three star rating. Early on in the book, Bergen writes:

"Islamist terrorism does have some kind of relationship to the religion of Islam, something that cannot be wished away by claims that Islam is simply a religion of peace, or by the desire not to offend, or because it is too easy to underestimate the strength of others' religious beliefs in our increasingly secular world. The worldview of jihadist militants is informed by a certain reading of Islamic texts, and there is more than sufficient ammunition in the Koran...to buttress their assertions that jihad is necessary against the perceived enemies of Islam".

This is something that I tend to agree with, but Bergen seems to contradict himself in the last chapter where he starts getting political and attempts to separate the religion of Islam and Islamic terrorism. He also tries to say that Islamic terrorists are no different than people of other religions who commit acts of violence, giving, as an example, Christians and the crusades. I mean forget that the last crusades were hundreds of years ago, they were very different than the Islamic terrorism of today. We can all understand that members of any religion can be violent, and Islam is not the only religion that has had violence committed in its name, but saying it is no different than some attacks from hundreds of years ago or isolated incidents is simply inaccurate. Also, today, though there may be some hateful groups of different religions here and there, but the one that is currently attacking people in different countries around the world is Islam and trying to downplay it is dishonest.

But, again, the last chapter is where it really starts to get ridiculous, in my opinion. When he starts asserting his opinions, he stops offering research. He claims that "Donald Trump called for an immediate end to all Muslim immigration to the States" which he actually did not do and called the temporary travel ban "un-American", saying that we didn't ban Italian immigrants in the 20's because a few of them joined the mafia. First off all, this is a faulty comparison because the Islamic terrorism threat is significantly larger and a more prominent issue than the mafia. Secondly, he failed to mention that we did put a halt on naturalization proceedings for German, Italian and Japanese immigrants after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and that Obama halted immigration for Iraqi refugees for six months in 2011, which is far more similar to the issue of terrorism than the mafia was.

He also uses the last chapter to remind us that bad people like Dylan Roof exist, gun violence exists and we're more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack, all of which are irrelevant to the issue of Islamic terrorism and do nothing to make it less of a threat. Yes, we're more likely to die in a car accident, but Islamic terrorism is still a problem and people are right to be concerned about it.

Just want to say, I'm not trying to say anything against Muslims, and I don't care if he or anyone else doesn't like Donald Trump, I just have a problem with his false comparisons and trying to divert our attention to other acts of violence in an attempt to show how much of a threat he thinks terrorism isn't. For a book that was so well researched for the most part, it seems a shame he couldn't share much research in the last chapter to help make his point. The only reason I even mentioned any of this is because when he started giving us his opinions and analysis, he stopped giving us the research.

Overall, this book was informative and I would recommend it if you are interested in learning about lone wolf terrorism and how terrorism and our response to it has evolved over the last few years, but I would ignore the last chapter because it's not research, it's just him trying to support his political agenda.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Author's website: http://peterbergen.com

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