Several times Agatha Christie accompanied her husband Max Mallowan on his archaeological expeditions to the Middle East. When friends kept on asking how she lived there, Agatha decided to write her adventures down in this book.

The title, in fact, is a pun on "tell," the Arabic word for hill or mound, which is used in the Middle East to describe the hill-like shapes of buried archaeological sites.

This book is probably the most humorous book the detective writer has ever written. She not only puts her own fame in perspective, but also acts as a keen observer of those little things that make humans such funny creatures. Although you never lose the impression that most of the characters in this non-fiction book are caricatures of real people, it still gives you a plausible impression of how life strolled on in the Middle East at that time.

Do not expect a serious treatise on archaeological excavations, because you won't find any scientific information in this book. What you can expect is a rather messy hodgepodge of all-day situations that may bring a smile on your face. And that's fine with me, because that's all Agatha intended it to be: an easily digested chronicle written with love.

When reality surpasses fiction: Every near-eastern archaeologist will love to read over and over again this wonderful book. Almost every situation is still true today.

Yallah Shebab!

I HAVE HEARD ABOUT THIS BOOK AND WANT TO HAVE IT. HOWEVER, IT SEEMS THAT YOU ARE NOT AWARE THAT IT HAS BEEN RE-PUBLISHED AND HAS BEEN REVIEWED IN THE ATLANTIC, LATEST ISSUE, IF IT IS AVAILABLE PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

David Pryce-Jones doesn't give you much reason to be optomistic about the relations between the West and the Arabs. In fact, he doesn't give you any hope at all.

Pryce-Jones's thesis is that the heart of Arab culture is an "Honor/Shame" ethic. Those who live by it, he says, have one great overiding goal: to be powerful and respected in the eyes of others. Any criticism is taken as an attack, and all effort is devoted to subjegating others. There is no real basis for peace within Arab culture, or in the relations of Arabs with non-Arabs, for such a civilization is a perpetual war of all against all, the only question being how violent it will be at any given time.

Worse, reason is utterly impotent. Pryce-Jones maintains that Arab civilization is certain it has all the answers. If something is working out the way it should, then that is because someone was plotting against the Arabs. All the West can do is keep defeating them till their entire society disintegrates.

I hope Pryce-Jones is wrong, or at least exaggerating. I fear he is not. Regardless, this book's point of view needs to be considered. It may be as bad as he thinks.

This is the work of a genius. Historians list events, commentators come with analysis and predictions, and politicians add their speeches of propaganda - and still it all does not make sense to us. Then along comes a genius and gives a solution to the puzzle, and everything becomes clear. This book is rich in historical facts and serious analysis and at the same time it is written in a fluent style and as absorbing as the best of novels. Pryce-Jones has the eye of an artist, and with it he looks at events and illuminates them. He arrives at the truth. The reader then says, 'Of course! Now it makes sense'.

The author gives the readers a key to understand the Arabs and muslims. Why Arabs migrate in millions and risk their lives in dangerous journeys to gain access to the West in search of livelihood, and yet hate the West. Israel offered its Arabs economic boom without having to travel away to the West but Arafat chose terror and killing, and hunger for his people. Nobody who had read the book's first edition would have expectd otherwise. It is a tragedy that CNN and the European Union politicians continue to support Arab rulers and their agression, and in this way ruin the lives of ordinary Arabs, and any chance of peace in the world. After this book, they have no excuse.

This book is a very distressing work. The author starts with a thesis and never lets go, analyzing almost every aspect of his chosen subject --the Arabs-- from social, political, sexual, literary, artistic, and other perspectives, reaching the conclusion that people are what they are, and that our attempts at rationalizing the behavior of societies that are totally alien to our own must end in absolute disapointment if not outright exasperation. The cultural weight of centuries rests on the Arabs and Pryce-Jones uncovers layer after layer of myth, folklore, history, lies, and the western folly of seeing Western problems and solutions mirrored in Arab realities, projecting onto a different people sets of values and accepted norms of behavior that are just not part of their lives. For the first time I have read an author that tells me something I suspected from my admittedly limited dealings with Arabs in 12 years: they understand power, but democracy escapes them as an absurdity. Any sort of sexual liberation that goes beyond the cosmetic (and even that is pushing it) is not bound to happen any time soon in the Arab world. Without it, any sort of "democracy" they may have will never be more than a mirage, a photocopy of the original. Their family lives are deeply dictatorial, and so is their social life. They will abase themselves in front of those seen as superiors, and they will humiliate those seen as inferiors. Any other treatment is alien. This is what makes this book disturbing: I have read other books on the subject and I see the coverage of news from that area of the world, and now I realize how deeply wrong those assessments are. Pryce-Jones understands politics in the Arab world as power-plays and power-grabs. He is right. The sooner we realize that, the easier it will be to deal with this reality. There are errors. The worst one is that the author insists on putting Arabs, Turks, and Persians in the same bag. They may, overall, share a common religion, even considering the Shi'a- Sunni rift, and the many other divisions inside the Muslim world (Alawites and Druzes being just a part of this deeply divided group), but they are not the same people. The book is subtitled "An interpretation of the Arabs": it should have been exactly that and leave Turks and Persians alone or, if the author really wanted to include these other peoples, the subtitle should have been changed. Also, the actor Omar Sharif is described as "not an Arab, but a Coptic Christian." Well, there are plenty of Arabs who are also Christians. Sharif is an Egyptian. That makes him an Arab. End of the argument. Still, these points are not enough to demerit a very courageous work that dares to present the views of the author as they are. These views, I feel, are very much true.

Islam Unveiled calmly looks at what Islam teaches- exactly what you yourself might do if you were a reasonable person, had time to read the Koran and other important Islamic writings, and wanted to know whether or not you wanted to become Muslim. The author clearly believes that religions deserve to be taken seriously.
While some reviewers are using Islam Unveiled as a springboard for their own opinions about Islam or Christianity, the book itself patiently finds the areas where the two religions do in fact have irreconcilable differences. While the historical examples are wide ranging and fascinating, it is the beliefs of Muslims - not their actions- that take centre stage. Islam Unveiled is tremendously informative, and benefits immensely by being not a book of answers, but rather, as the title says, a book of excellent questions.

The negative reviews of this book are quite puzzling, and seem to be based merely on the principle that Islam should never be subject to critical examination. In fact, Spencer goes well out of his way to be respectful to Muslims, while at the same time fair to those wondering why the religion seems plagued with the sort of cultural and moral obstacles that make it inconsistent with liberal society.

It is not enough to wave the magic wand, as Islam's Western defenders often do, repeat a few mantras like "Islam is a religion of peace," and hope that no one dares to raise serious inquiry, no matter how understandable. How is it, for example, that if Islam is about peace and tolerance, its most ardent followers should be acting in exactly the opposite way - and with the full support of millions?

Spencer answers the questions that many of us are [quite justified in] asking by explaining the harsh edge to the theology and how it is quite plausible that those engaging in human rights abuses against unbelievers, women and others may be more in agreement with the Qur'an and Hadiths than their more moderate peers. If not, then there are many disturbing facts that need explaining away - pretending that they don't exist is simply insufficient.

The book does not deserve to be called "anti-Muslim." Spencer makes every effort to leave verses in context and to provide honest comparative analysis. I was left quite hopeful, in fact, that Islam will be able make the transition that other religions have made in embracing progressive revelation as a means of freedom from a ruthless past.

If you want a better understanding of the Islamic world, read this book!

Some of the below reviewers argue that Spencer's book is very biased against Islam. And those of us who are not dogmatic must allow that Spencer might be mistaken. The Koran and the Hadith (the Hadith are writings that record or claim to record the life of Muhammed and the early history of Islam) might be more compatible with respect for the individual, for religious freedom, and for human rights than Spencer seems to think. Islam might be less of a danger to humane ways of life and more benign than Spencer's book seems to show. Still, Spencer's book appears sincerely argued, broad-minded, intelligent, informed with detail, and not culturally chauvinist.

What the negative reviewers of Spencer's book fail to do, to my mind, is admit that, even if Spencer is wrong, it is understandable that he and many others think as they do about Islam, and natural that many in the West are concerned that Islam might be an incorrigibly dictatorial religion. All one need do to understand (if not agree with) such views is notice the medieval and dictatorial nature of most Islamic societies today. By failing to address this absolutely legitimate concern felt by many in the West about Islam, the negative reviewers of Spencer somewhat undermine whatever trust one might have been inclined to place in their negative evaluation of Spencer's sharp criticisms of Islam.

Islam may in fact be fundamentally benign, but there certainly seems to be a strong prima facie empirical case at present that it represents a threat to any person in the world who cares about liberal institutions and civil rights. And much more is at stake than individuals' civil rights.

Consider that (1) roughly 70% of all wars during the last two centuries have been fought between two dictatorships, while (2)the remaining roughly 30% of wars have been fought between a dictatorship and a democracy, while (3) virtually NO wars have been fought between democracies during that time.

If one really digests the three statements of the preceding paragraph, the logical conclusion would seem to be that the more democracy in the international equation, the less war. The less democracy in the international equation, the more war. And if we are now living in a time when the near-miraculous and ever-accelerating progress of technology, including weapons of mass destruction technology, may relatively soon make it possible for small groups to wreak destruction on scales hitherto unimaginable, using ever new inventions some of which are at the moment no more than a twinkle in the eye of some scientist at work somewhere in the world, then, in this technological context of ever more rapidly growing destructive power, and given the direct relation between dictatorship and war over the last two centuries, it seems urgently imperative to counter anti-democratic, anti-freedom forces where ever they are. The accelerating technological revolution relative to WMD means that time is not on our side. Islam MIGHT BE fundamentally anti-democratic, but certainly IS at present a non-democratic force in many nations worldwide, and so we must think through and face the implications and not blind ourselves to the increasingly grave dangers rising at home and abroad as a result of the nexus between Islamo-fascism's terrorist agents and the ongoing tech revolution. We should try to read a broad spectrum of books about Islam, including Spencer's and those that take a 'friendlier' view toward Islam than his. SPENCER'S BOOK, THOUGH WE SHOULD PRAY THAT HE IS WRONG, IS A BRILLIANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEBATE ABOUT ISLAM'S ESSENTIAL CHARACTER AND IMPLICATIONS FOR WAR AND PEACE.

I read this book several years ago, when I became fascinated by the Mitfords. One sister, Nancy, wrote a couple of the most delightful comic novels ever, (Love in a Cold Climate, especially) largely revolving around the love life of the English aristocracy. Another sister married into the higher reaches of English aristocracy. One sister, Jessica, got involved in the Spanish Civil war, then moved to the US, became a communist party member, and wrote a best selling expose' of the funeral industry that even my conservative-republican father loved. Another sister, Diana, married the head of the British Fascist party a few years before the beginning of the Second World War.

The youngest sister, Unity, (Yes, I finally got to her!) hung out with Diana, teased Jessica, and ended up, as a teenager, loitering around Berlin in Hitler's known hangouts. She managed to get herself picked up by Hitler himself, who at that time, loved the idea of attaching an English Rose to his group. She went with the "inner circle" to various speeches; she was close friends with numerous vicious anti-semites, whom she seemed to find agreeable and sensible; and she publically argued for a German-English 'alliance' even as Germany invaded its neighbor states.

Apparently, the view we often get of England completely united against facism is not entirely accurate. There were a significant number of English people who thought Hitler was a good thing, and Jews were a big problem, and would have been happy to side with Germany. Unity's brother-in-law, Mosely, would appear to be the man Hitler would have chosen to run England for him if things had turned out differently. Unity's sister Jessica fear that Mosely's crowd was going to take over, and that is why she moved to the US. (Although I suppose we had the same sort of people in the US too ...)

Unity hung out in the thick of this group, and with the Nazi's themselves, and apparently had a marvelous time. She was treated like a Princess by the people who ran Germany (her life in England had been more troubled... She was something of a misfit.) She invited here parents to visit (more English aristocrasy) and they enjoyed meeting Hitler very much; thought he was a fine fellow.

Unity was not disillusioned with her choice until England actally declared war on Germany after the invasion of France. She was living in Berlin then, close to Hitler and his crowd, and she shot herself in the head when the announcement came. She survived, and Hitler himself arranged to have her sent back home to England through neutral Switzerland, where she lived out the rest of her life physically and mentally disabled.

I suppose I haven't really talked about the book. I can't swear as to whether or not it was well-written because I was so fascinated by the subject matter I didn't care. Very readable, though, as I recall. And it seemed to have a reasonable, relatively objective (or at least not vindictive) perspective on the politics and personalities involved.

Price-Jones seems less interested in telling the history of the demise of the USSR than he is in attacking the left. He spends the first chunk of the book talking about how evil communism was, which is not debatable. However, Price-Jones' target is not the Soviets; it's Western liberals who did not share his views on confrontation with them. The author attacks those who tried to promote coexistence as unwitting stooges or active collaborators with the Soviet regime. That's not the kind of book I expected from the title. I kept reading, waiting for the history to start, but I gave up after more than 80 pages of Price-Jones' ranting.

Without sentiment or any sense of loss, David Pryce-Jones chronicles the fall of European communism through a journalist's eye and the eyewitness accounts of the rulers, dissidents and apparatchiks who were there.

This is a powerful book, for it harbors no illusions that the Soviet Union was any kind of "workers' state" or that communism, as an ideal or a practicality, had any legitimacy as a form of government.

In Pryce-Jones' analysis, if anything caused communism's downfall, it was the misplaced reasoning that a regime built on fear, terror and corruption could stand up to glasnost and perestroika. By their own admission in the book, most of the nomenklatura in Russia and its Eastern European satellites understood this. Mikhail Gorbachev, in an attempt to reform the system, exposed its basic illegitimacy and brought it crashing down.

With the former Communist bloc now open to greater investigation into its history, Pryce-Jones' book provides a great deal of illumination into Kremlin and Warsaw Pact politics during the late 1980s. For instance, while Gorbachev was being courted by the West, he was being reviled as a traitor by his own cabinet and allies. One of the more tantalizing questions Pryce-Jones leaves unresolved is whether Gorbachev indeed knew the consequences of perestroika would be the break-up of the USSR and the end of its occupation of Eastern Europe. The author interviews participants in the failed August 1991 coup, which essentially ended Communist Party rule in Russia, who openly wonder if Gorbachev instigated it as a calculated risk to flush out any remaining hard-line opposition.

Parts of the book read like a political thriller. As the gradual revolution in Eastern Europe and the Baltics takes hold, Pryce-Jones' sources take us into Round Table meetings and back room conferences where, quite literally, the fates of nations were being decided. The author compares the way popular resistance grew in the wake of Gorbachev's reforms and-in telling detail-shows! that Gorbachev essentially disallowed the use of Soviet forces to sustain control in any of the satellites. Only in Romania did the tanks roll, and that proved disasterous in the end as Ceaucescu became the only Communist ruler to be executed.

More pointedly, we get the inside stories of how leaders aging leaders like Poland's General Jaruzelski and East Germany's Honecker. in the end, lacked the will to enforce their rule through armed repression. Some of the most exciting material concerns the last days before the Berlin Wall fell, where we see Honecker fuming over Gorbachev's refusal to order Hungary to close its border-through which thousands of East Germans were escaping, and the growing tension over the Leipzig "prayer meetings," which had become weekly mass demonstrations against the government.

Throughout his reporting, Pryce-Jones is not afraid to make judgments. One of his sharpest is against the American and Western European Intellectual Left, which he views as doing much to perpetuate the belief that Communism was as legitimate a political system as democracy and that the Cold War was little more than a face-off between two superpowers that, at the bottom line, were essentially the same. His heroes, on the other hand, are Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the dissidents in Russia, the Baltics and all of Eastern Europe, and the long line of West German chancellors who resisted domestic and international pressure to withdraw from NATO, a long-term strategic objective of the Kremlin.

It is too bad that right now, "The Strange Death of the Soviet Union" is out of print. One would hope that it is still available from the U.K. It is an invaluable contribution to history and deserves reading by anyone interested in learning the kitchen details about how communism fell.