Andresa Cardoso Cardoso itibaren Zaganiaris 845 00, Greece itibaren Zaganiaris 845 00, Greece

I'm always a little suspicious of authors who claim to have the one and only theory to explain certain events or phenomena, and Levitt does just that. While some of his theories are interesting and provoke further investigation, he seems to think that his explanation is the only logical one. In social issues, there is never just one cause for anything, never a cut-and-dry reason for anything, so I urge readers to investigate what they find to be of interest by using other works to get a more thorough explanation or theorizing of causes.

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**Book club members, beware of spoilers!*** I was so grateful when this stupid, spoiled American couldn't choose when to see her kids becuase something finally happened to her. It made the 130 pages of crap I had to read beforehand mean something. But then I continued to be disappointed. Two of the biggest problems in the Middle East are its treatment of women and its reliance on nepotism. She was dumb enough to let her children be taken to Palestine and hadn't bothered to educate herself on her (lack of) rights, especially in family law. But then, she relies on nepotism to secure a job, talk to elite Palestinian women (an oxymoron?), and eventually calls on her US cabinet minister cousin (Donna Shalala) to get her kids out when the intifada starts. Obviously the nepotism didn't bother her. I would like to know more about her father, mostly because I want to know more about the unregulated insurance he did time for and how much of that money went to support his jet-setting brat. It was hard to feel sorry for her when her resources were cut off by his prison sentence. However, I don't want to be too negative here. I did get some things out of this book, which are leads on books about Suha Arafat (wife of Yasar), Raymonda Tamil (Suha's mom), and Toujan al-Faisal (Jordanian activist and almost convicted apostate). Along with The Caged Virgin and The Nine Parts of Desire and A Thousand Splendid Suns, they might make a more compelling statement about women in Islam and why they need to rebel. Also, I'd like to give the author credit for not making her kids part of a tit-for-tat battle with their father. She was very atuned to politics of divorce and did a great favor to her children by not dragging them into such a mire.