Reviews and Comments

Lost a star for confusing me near the end, but it's altogether standard Adams hilarity.

I've published my thoughts and reflections elsewhere.

I won this book from Goodreads Giveaways. I'm still in the middle of reading it, but my review will be published as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: I won this book from First Reads

We Look Like the Enemy is a well-researched, in-depth book. In some ways, I feel like comparing it to [b:fill-in-id] because both are written in a similar heavily-cited, journalistic style.

Like Start-Up Nation, this book was a very informative read. However, I found it hard to keep reading. I expect to have to push myself through the first 50 or 100 pages of a book, no matter what the genre, but I had to push myself through the middle of this one. The first few chapters and the last chapter read the easiest; the rest of the book seemed to move slowly.

No, this book is not a narrative, though the subtitle—"the hidden story of Israel's Jews from Arab lands"—might suggest it. The organizational structure eluded me. The chapter titles did cover the main topic of each chapter, but a lot of times the text would refer to something from a few chapters before without any restatement. I found such references hard to follow.

Really, the whole book was a bit hard to follow. I expect that a richer background in Israeli politics, history, and culture would have helped me to better understand the book, but I selected this book from the giveaway list in large part because I expected to learn about Israel's culture. I was probably mistaken in my expectation that I would learn about Israel as a whole from a book focused on a subset of the country's population.

When I've had a chance to learn more about Israel as a nation, and as a culture, I will try reading this book again and hopefully comprehend more of what it has to say.

Picking up this book when I did was a mistake; it made me stay up way too late the night before a big rehearsal. But reading it was the anti-mistake. I read it in two sittings, and that only because I had to break off the first to get some sleep before that rehearsal.

Like others have mentioned, the characters feel somewhat flat, but the book isn't really about character development but our society. The theme spoke to me. Somehow, this theme should be distributed through the world consciousness; a lot of issues Palahniuk brought up a decade ago are still unresolved, or worse than they were.

I am going to be "speaking to" the author in this review, though I don't know if he's still with us (probably not). So if your name is Morris Bealle, or even just Morris, don't take any of this the wrong way; it's not directed at you. :-)

Overall, the book has a lot of hard facts. However, because of Morris Bealle's extremely poor writing style, what should have been a pleasure became a chore, a slog. In fact, the last 40 pages alone took me about an hour and a half—much longer than that number of pages would take me in most other books.

I'd be lying if I denied taking my rating down a peg for the book's age. There's a lot of information in it, but everything is from at least 60 years ago. A compelling story of government corruption is presented using evidence from the first 49 years of the 20th century, but how much of it is still true today? There's no way to know, so I'm certainly not going to mark this as a "must-read".

There's also the matter of the final chapter. I mean, WTF? What a great idea, Morris, to just go off into the future, past your own publication date, past the most recent printing, to bona fide fiction without telling anyone. That last chapter is a big example of what I mean when I say "poor writing style". It's fine to fictionalize, as long as the reader is aware of it. Use future tense or something. This isn't Star Trek; you don't have a "future history"; you're presenting what could happen, and/or what you hope will happen. Make it clearer.

All told, I had this book checked out from the library for six weeks. I almost never keep books that long, because I read them and return them. Style, style, style—that's pretty much all that slowed me down. And speaking of style, I have one more bone to pick.

Morris, your book reads like a rant. My dad paged through it and declared it "a rant." I got through the first few chapters and began to think of it as "a rant." Now, there's not really anything wrong with that, but it would have been nice to hear more opinions from the other side of the fence. You have plenty of examples from your own opinions and people who side with you, but I can't recall any significant presentation of the opposite viewpoint. What would it have taken to get more information from the AMA, FDA, and BBBs? How about a statement from the "Medical Mussolini", "Fuehrer [sic:] Fishbein", attempting to refute your arguments? That would have made some interesting reading, he countering your arguments and you countering his counterarguments.

Anyway, in summary, this book is a sixty-year-old, poorly-written, one-sided rant. I'm not sure who I'd recommend it for; maybe fundamentalist anti-drug movement leaders. Not casual readers. I tried to read it casually, and it didn't really work for that purpose.

I was very excited about this book when I found out that I'd won it from Goodreads Giveaways (First Reads). The description given in the giveaway section drew me in; a book about Israel and business had to be just awesome!

Diving right in to it the day I got it, I immediately knew my expectations would be met. However, I didn't know how much they'd be exceeded. The book is extremely well written and edited; while I was reading, I encountered maybe one minor grammatical mistake—an extraordinarily low count, considering that most books I've read have at least a few. The non-traditional organization works well, going off on tangents and tying them flawlessly into the main idea. Chapters can span Israel's entire history, or focus on one specific part.

The book draws heavily on cited sources, all of which can be found in the back. I didn't use the footnotes (too much work, and I was too engrossed to be flipping around), but the "Notes" and "Bibliography" sections have a wealth of resources for further reading. From the bibliography, I have already extracted several books and articles to put on my list, and I expect to get more.

Unlike [b:the last book I won|6535289|Ashley and Tiana|Jessica R. Dreistadt|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QlmvlarZL.SL75.jpg|6727448], I immensely enjoyed every page of this book. I didn't want to finish it because it was so good. But I learned a lot, and have gained resources for learning more. Start-Up Nation is one of the most informative books I have ever read, and anyone who has even a passing interest in Israel or business should read it.

Now I can turn my attention to [b:We Look Like the Enemy|7159855|We Look Like the Enemy The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands|Rachel Shabi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1261121386s/7159855.jpg|6251087], my next First Reads win.

Just received the book this morning (2009-12-02). Begun reading; it's engrossing right from the start. An interesting coincidence that [b:a book I picked up|6434142|The Film Club A Memoir|David Gilmour|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256060064s/6434142.jpg|2291062] at B&N just the other day was also published by Twelve.

I was just notified today (2009-10-26) that I have won a copy of this book through Goodreads' First Reads program. I should receive the book within the next few weeks, and I have put it at the top of my to-read list. My review will be posted as soon as possible.

I have decided that I officially love Douglas Adams. Two books and I can't wait to read the rest of his writing!