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!

This book is a wonderful collection of tales told by Tunisian women, translated into English. While it is folklore, it is not for children--some of the tales are quite risqué! Highly recommended--but for adults!

Fun and easy reading. Challenges stereotypes and cliches one may have about women in muslim societies. This is the tale of tales which explores the oral tradition of a society's women to pass on stories of one's culture. By the telling stories -often "dissed" as old wives tales - of women in non-traditional roles, or sometimes ordinary roles, these tales validated and placed a value on the lives of many women in a society which tended to devalue their existence. Read and see how important that part of your growing up may have been. I liked the book and challenge you to find a reason to dislike it.

You can't imagine how much detail and information there is in this book. It must have taken this gentleman several lifetimes to actually visit all of the places about which he so accurately describes. This is far better than the Lonely Planet book on Tunisia in my opinion, especially for people who hope to travel to this progressive nation that is very "American friendly" and quite a bargain in most ways.

Footprint Tunisia is without question the best travel book I've ever used. It's information was accurate to the letter in every case. Background history of the country and it's ancient colonizers was exhaustive compared to the standards of most guide books. Perhaps most impressive is the pertinence of the information to every type of traveller, budget to luxe. The clever and pointed opinions were always on target. The writer did not hesitate to give sly negative reviews where applicable. "Lonely Planet" and "Let's Go" both offer good information but have target readers and leave out the needs of many of us as well as frequently providing only rudimentary information. With Footprint you can throw out all the other guidebooks or just avoid buying them entirely, that's how exhaustive I found the Tunisia entries to be. I've used many guide books, Eyewitness, Access (awesome in the original versions, especially for walking tours and architectural sites,food and shops)and Fodor's but these all pale in comparison to Footprint. Where have they been hiding? I've yet to see them on the shelves of those big bookstores in my neighborhood. Bravo to Amazon for carrying them all.

I think it was OK but not what I expected. I was getting
this book I THOUGHt was for childern. About "Meeting Footloose Fox" on VHS (Disney) is what the grandkids wanted, so I was disappointed first BUT Even though I never expected it I found it a complling read and a histrical masterpiece. So I say A+ and that I never gave before this time. I am Harold McInnes bye.

Orr Kelly's "Meeting the Fox" - Great work! Aside from "The Rommel Papers" (E. Rommel/B.H. Liddell) this book is the only book singly dedicated to battles of the North African theatre that I have read so my review may be limited from a comparative standpoint. Yet with a fairly decent number of books on WWII under my belt I can easily state that "Meeting the Fox" was one of the most enjoyable I've read. It's a great complement to "The Rommel Papers" in that it is dedicated to the North African theatre after entrance of the US Army with Operation Torch - the first grand scale allied amphibious landing. "The Rommel Papers" deals more inclusively with the entire North African campaign, and not surprisingly from the German perspective. "Meeting the Fox" is really dedicated to examining the US Army's "trial by fire and blood" (as it was) upon it's first (disastrous) meeting with the German/Italian armies. Kelly paints a nice picture of how the US Army that landed in North Africa changed from a green, poorly trained and often poorly lead force in nine short months to one more familiar to most Americans that fought and won in Northern Europe a year later. Kelly is certainly critical of problems that arose in the early battles, but he is also fair. While others have lain certain and almost singular blame for early failures on Maj. Gen. Fredendall, the highest-ranking field commander during the first bloody loses, Kelly is quick to point out that Fredendall was not the only "incompetent". Moreover, Kelly gives credit to commanders who have shared blame but probably didn't deserve it, such as Combat Command B commander Brig. Gen. Robinett and Ranger leader Maj. Darby. Fortunately for many of those involved in early defeats that were not removed from command, they learned from the experiences and went on to brilliant successes, such as Darby.

"Meeting the Fox" is a well written, easy to read book. There is ample hard information and facts for the serious student and enough literary flare and style for the more casual WWII reader. All in all this book belongs on my Classics shelf and I recommend it highly!

This study is an engaging often humorous read that does not follow the stereotypical media representation of the Muslim women. In this easy to read yet scholarly study, Holmes-Eber invites us to meet tens of real Muslim women. Not the mistreated and oppressed media cartoon, but women that we can relate to and understand. If you are looking for yet another sensationalized depiction of downtrodden Arab women find another book. If, however, you would like to discover what real Muslim women are like, this is one of the few and far between books that you should read.
I read the book in two nights and found it utterly refreshing! Especially in light of recent events this book will help all of us Americans to see Arabs and Muslims as people first, making us question the Arab enemy image that we are continually bombarded with. This book is truly a contribution to cultural understanding and hopefully world peace.

I picked up a copy in a used book store thinking this would be interesting. I started reading and couldn't stop. Great for anyone who doesn't want the Roman point of view.

Blumenson writes an outstanding history of the battle from the point of view of commanders from platoon level to Corps level, stressing the problems facing them and the means by which they arrived at their decisions. The best acount of the US army's initiation to combat against the Germans that I have ever read.

IT'S WANDERFUL, BECAUSE YOU CAN SUCCEED IN BEING IN LINE WITH THE UNIVERSAL LOW AND WITH ALL THE MANKIND, ANIMAL AND SO ON!

If you're bound for Tunisia, you won't want to leave without this book. I'm one of those people who thinks there is never any *one* guide that's ideal for a destination -- I always take 2 good guides. And, for Tunisia, the Rough Guide is definitely the first of the two.

It is much, much more comprehensive than any other guide. The Blue Guide (my other choice for Tunisian visits), Lonely Planet Guide (also excellent though with less background), and others literally do not have 1/2 the content of the Rough Guide.

By supplementing this book with one other one (the Blue Guide for in-depth history & cultural information, or the Lonely Planet Guide for a smaller, hipper subset of travel tips) you'll have a great Tunisian stay. Whichever "other" guide you choose, you'll want this one for the COMPLETE story of any destination in any corner of Tunisia.

Whether you're basking on the corniche at Hammamet, Bizerte, or la Marsa; travelling to tourist meccas like the Tunis Medina, Carthage, Sfax, Jerba, el Djem, Matmata and the Sahara palmeries; or taking jaunts to more out-of-the-way spots like Kerkouane or Tabarka... Take this book.

"The Reluctant Agent" is Phillip Kurata's first novel, but in its lean, evocative writing and uncluttered structure, you'd never guess it was the work of a first-timer. In leading Habib ben Hamed, a feckless Tunisian intellectual, to his inexorable fate during the political unrest of the 1960s, Kurata brings home two major truths: that in times of injustice, the war between conscience and personal safety is usually unwinnable; and that revolutions eat not only their young, but anyone in their paths. Kurata has been compared with Graham Greene and Albert Camus; in his detailed insight into how dictatorships work, he obviously knows his Orwell and Arthur Koestler as well. In its persuasive portrayal of the collision between modernism and traditional Islam, "The Reluctant Agent" is urgently pertinent reading in 2002. The deceptively simple yet compelling story keeps you turning the pages to the final paragraph, which is breathtaking in its lethal spareness. "The Reluctant Agent" is a must-read for anyone interested in the literature of revolution and politics.

Phillip Kurata's vivid prose style and deep sociopolitical insight capture the essential conflict of post-colonial Tunisia; but more than that this spectacular literary debut speaks to an eternal question confronted by every man and woman: How do I live truthfully and what price do I pay for compromising my integrity? Kurata makes these costs explicit through richly drawn characters and the consequences their actions bring about. This novel succeeds because, unlike so much contemporary fiction, it possesses a moral center that pulls the reader into the lives and locale of a distant yet all too familiar place. It is fair to compare "The Reluctant Agent" to works by Lampedusa, Hemingway, Koestler and Solzhenitsyn. I hope there will be an encore performance.

Anyone who ever spent time in a third world country in the post colonial cold war era will recognize the characters and settings in Phillip Kurata's The Reluctant Agent. The country is Tunisia shortly after its independence and Habib Ben Hamed is caught between his own world and that of the former French colonizer. Unfortunately Habib is at home in neither and becomes caught up in a postcolonial drama he cannot fully comprehend nor control. The political rhetoric is of socialism and progress but the reality is that of power and domination as the world of the colonizer gives way to that of the local ruling class.

Reminiscent of Graeme Green's best work Kurata draws the reader into a rich psychological world of men and women caught up in historical forces that sweep them along to inevitable endings. The exotic settings of North Africa, colorfully described in clean declarative prose, amplify the inner turmoil of a hapless Habib caught between his heart's desire and the cruel reality that denies it.

My own postcolonial third world experience was in Somalia at the end of the cold war but the settings and characters differed little from those described in Kurata's novel. I saw many Somalis draw sustenance from their former colonizer's culture even as they moved quickly to their own destruction crushed between the early socialist rhetoric of their postcolonial freedom and the twin barbarisms of dictatorship and cold war politics. Many of today's headlines stem from the cold war and postcolonial issues still unfolding in developing countries. Thus, Habib's dilemma is as relevant today as it was twenty to twenty-five years ago. Kurata, who lived in Tunis, saw to the core and created a world that allows the rest of us to see it too.