Escape from Zarahemla

Ever since I first read Tennis Shoes among the Nephites, I have enjoyed Chris Heimerdinger's books, including those outside of his Tennis Shoes Adventure Series.  A few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by Passage to Zarahemla, which stuck with Heimerdinger's tried and true formula centered around time travel, but gave us something new and different from the Tennis Shoes books since the characters were unfamiliar with time travel and not that familiar with religion, either.  As with most Heimerdinger books, it was left wide open, just begging for a sequel.

It took eight years, but Heimerdinger finally got around to writing the sequel, Escape from Zarahemla (ISBN: 978-1-60861-539-1).  In it, Kerra, Brock, their father, Chris, and their grandfather, Grandpa Lee, purposefully head off into a mysterious "rift in time" to see about some of the people left behind — Chris's Nephite wife and kid as well as Kerra's childhood friend (and now love interest), the Nephite soldier Kiddoni.  It doesn't take but a few seconds before they're entangled in an ongoing war between the righteous Nephites and Lamanites, who have banded together to take on the Gadianton robbers.  The twist to the whole thing is that the Gadiantons have someone in their midst trying to usurp power, a man rumored to practice a magic even blacker than that of your everyday Gadianton, Akuhuun.  Like all Heimerdinger adventures, the books, written for teenagers, move along quickly, and you're pulled right into the action, of which there is never a shortage.  One adventure after another befalls characters from throughout history, including an unexpected turn involving one of the gangsters that wanted to kill Brock after Brock ditched a quarter million worth of illegal drugs in the first book.  In the end, it seems like things are good, notwithstanding the honorable deaths of a few of the good guys, especially since Chris and his family are reunited, as are Kerra and Kiddoni.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series because it was a departure from the Tennis Shoes series.  Fresh characters and a modern-day setting that presented some hilarious passages as Gadianton warriors met 7-Eleven and that American icon, the car, for the first time.  While the action was as fast and as furious as ever, and I enjoyed the read, phrases like "the smell of ozone" notwithstanding, I was slightly disappointed in two things about this book.  One was that at the end, Heimerdinger managed to connect this series to his Tennis Shoes series.  In the future, the two series will be one.  From my point of view, this is too bad, because I liked the new faces and new story lines.  Second, I was disappointed that the action in this book took place in the ancient world.  This book felt more like a Tennis Shoes book than the first one, and we already knew Heimerdinger could write this.  The breath of fresh air that was in Passage to Zarahemla wasn't here, and considering the future plans for the characters, won't be here in the future, either.  I would've enjoyed more Gadiantons wandering through small, southern Utah towns.  Who says adventure and good, old-fashioned sword fighting fun can't have healthy doses of humor thrown in?  All in all, I thought the backstory to longtime heroes Gid and Huracan was well-written, even if it did make the book feel like a prequel, and enjoyed it, just not as much as I hoped I would.

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Not without My Daughter

Kidnapping is a subject that was terrifying as a kid.  I can honestly say that at times I have figured that any social awkwardness I may experience and discomfort when placed in the company of new people can be traced back to my early childhood and a visceral, albeit somewhat learned, reaction to all things stranger.  Of course, in the world of my childhood, kidnapping was carried out by strangers.  Maybe the 1980s were just a simpler time and people were more upstanding and that's why I didn't know about how in the U.S., most kidnapping is carried out by someone the victim knows, usually a family member.  Or maybe I just had a simplified view of the world around me?

No matter my view of the world, a gripping story of international intrigue, raw, primordial bravery, faith, and patriotism, is told by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer in Not without My Daughter (ISBN: 0-312-92588-3), a memoir of Mahmoody's experiences when her husband took her and their daughter to Iran and then forcibly kept them there.  Mahmoody starts with her flight to Iran from America's heartland, where she spent her entire life and moved from her blue-collar beginnings to entertaining and comfort of the upper middle class thanks to her Iranian husband.  She had various reasons for agreeing on the flight to Iran, but staying there indefinitely wasn't one of them.  That such a plan is her husband's plan is apparent within a week of arrival, and it's made worse by the fact that most of his family, and like most eastern cultures, family connections are extensive, is in on the kidnapping.  Mahmoody and her kindergarten-age daughter, Mahtob, endure the next two years under what amounts to house arrest in an unfamiliar and usually hostile foreign land where hatred for America is not only the official line, but something many citizens openly and actively agree with.  Eventually, Mahmoody is able to make contacts with various people, some simple shopkeepers, some foreign government officials, and others who are just the universal kind-hearted person you always hope exists out there.  She uses these contacts to organize a treacherous escape for her and her daughter, and through a few minor miracles, they are smuggled to freedom.

I vaguely remembered hearing about this or a similar case at some point in the news, so when I had the opportunity to read this book, the opportunity seemed very interesting.  The book didn't disappoint.  The bottom line is that the story is a good one — it's an enjoyable book.  I was appreciative of some other aspects of the book, too, though.  I was appreciative of the authors' descriptions of the big city, the lively markets, and sights, sounds, and smells.  I was intrigued by Mahmoody's return to the faith of her childhood even as she came to better understand and appreciate the faith of those around her, including those causing so much grief and pain in her life.  Unlike some critics, who have claimed Mahmoody's description of Iran and Iranians is calloused and even racist or bigoted, I found nothing of the sort in the book.  First of all, she wasn't trying to paint a picture of all Iranians or the whole country; she was writing a memoir, which by its very definition, describes her — and only her — thoughts and experiences.  Second, she pointed out that there were many kind and generous people in her life while in Iran, including those in her husband's family that she came to respect and to a certain extent, love.  Finally, I appreciated the patriotism.  Mahmoody is one who has experienced other cultures and other lands.  While the circumstances obviously bias her, she was remarkably even-handed in describing the things she saw and experienced.  Through all that, though, she came to appreciate her homeland, the USA, even more than ever before because of the real freedoms that we do have and others, sadly, often do not.

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The World's Most Dangerous Places

Trips were always something that intrigued me.  Family trips, whether they were overnight camping trips just up Farmington Canyon or drives across the heartland to visit famous cities like St. Louis, were highlights of my childhood even if it didn't always seem that way at the time.  I know I was envious of friends that had flown in an airplane and I hadn't as a kid. I think I was about 11 years old when I finally had that chance, and it didn't disappoint, but, then again, that was back in the day when a flight from Salt Lake to Orlando featured an actual meal even for people in economy-class seats and honest-to-goodness turbulence that had us bouncing in and out of our seats.  Everyone knows the sad condition of meals on planes these days and somehow they've managed to avoid most turbulence, too.  The magic of travel hasn't worn off yet.  In fact, ever since my stint in Russia as a missionary, it's probably only gotten stronger.  It was my time in Russia that firmly entrenched my preferred style of travel, too — eschew organized tours, get around like the natives, pack in as much as one can since one can sit around at home for free (if you're going to pay for it, you may as well see some of the world's most impressive sights), and embrace the chance to get off the beaten path, such as my short trip to Armenia.

In his fifth edition of his best-selling book, The World's Most Dangerous Places (ISBN: 978-0-06-001160-4), so-called extreme travel guru and author Robert Young Pelton explores some of the ins and outs of places that are most definitely off the beaten path.  He talks about some of the things one is likely to run into if you're trying to see the sights in Afghanistan, Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, or Russia.  The guide gives rather extensive information on adventure travel and the various ways to make it a reality in your life.  Then it delves into specific countries or regions (Chechnya, somehow, gets its own chapter even though Russia is also covered as a whole).  Each country or region gets a general overview, a run-down of some of the famous nutters that make the place a dangerous place to be, a list of other dangers that run the gamut from landmines to "67% of the hookers have AIDS," an idea of what getting a visa is like, and a list of some dates in the place's history that featured much death and general mayhem.  The book ends with a few more lists featuring things like what adventure tourists should pack and organizations that help people experience the crazy parts of the world while trying to "make a difference."

The book bills itself as a "guide to surviving hot spots, war zones, and the new[,] hidden dangers of global travel," but falls short of that goal.  It is undeniably often an enjoyable read, including some laugh-out-loud remarks thanks to the dry sarcasm and cynicism that anyone who has lived outside the U.S. for an appreciable amount of time will understand.  It is not hopeless commentary, but simply reality without the political correctness garbage that one suffers through when dealing with the media and academics.  Humor notwithstanding, there's not enough information specific to various situations to make the book any kind of real "guide to surviving" much of anything.  All the information provided is of a very general nature.  In fairness, it is probably meant to be that, but the advertising ought to be toned down if that is the case.  The sections on historical reasons and political reasons a place is now dangerous were often informative and nice overviews for someone like myself who needs some wit to make a place like Africa or South America seem even remotely interesting.  On the other hand, some of the facts were off, and when I see that the author says Russia is in NATO and labels a map of Russia in the Russia chapter as the "Commonwealth of Independent States," I have to wonder how much false information I read in the chapters about places I know almost nothing about.  Finally, one of the things I have come to admire a great deal in true guidebooks like DK's "Eyewitness Travel" series is a lack of opining; a guide book should just let you know how things are and not tell you if it's good, bad, or worth seeing or doing.  Pelton is obviously left-leaning, and that would not be a problem, except that it is brought up over and over again in the book, especially in his criticism of George Bush.  It grates on the reading and has little — if any — relevance to the subject at hand.  It should also be noted that some of the anecdotes included by journalists (for whom the book was written, in my opinion) include enough inappropriate language to garner the book an R-rating were it to be made into a movie.  The book is interesting reading as an overview to some crazy places that aren't on most people's radars, has some biting but often true commentary that will keep people interested, but has enough flaws to make me wonder how it became the phenomenon that it is.

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Gospel Principles

I have been part of lessons or, admittedly, even discussions where members of the Church are talking about things people make fun of when they say the words "deep doctrines" and "High Priests," especially when those two phrases are used in the same sentence.  What I have come to learn, although probably not fully implement, in life, though, is that the real keys to the gospel, and, in turn, the real keys to living life in a way that helps ourselves and helps others, all the while bringing us true and lasting happiness, is in the basics.  I probably first truly came to understand this on my mission in St. Petersburg, Russia, but it has been confirmed to me over and over since then, and when I really take the time to look back on things and evaluate life before my mission, I see there, too, the key role gospel basics played in my life.  One of my favorite definitions of principle is "a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived."  If one understands principles, all the twists, turns, and unscripted scenarios of life are more easily and appropriately dealt with.  When you know the basics, you can apply them as needed, and come out the better for the wear.

A couple years ago, the Church issued a new version of Gospel Principles, which had historically been used in classes for newly baptized members of the Church or for those who had not yet been baptized.  This new version, though, has been used as the main course of study in Relief Society and Melchizedek priesthood meetings throughout 2010 and 2011.  It is just what the title says it is.  It has forty-seven chapters on key subjects like faith, repentance, baptism, marriage, tithing, chastity, fasting, the Millennium, and the final judgement.  If there is a basic tenet of the gospel — something you really need to know to be saved — it's in here.  There are abundant references to the scriptures, explanations from modern-day prophets, and even pictures and illustrations that explain and teach things, too.  It's a great resource for personal study as well as for a starting point when one has a lesson to teach or a talk to give.  My experience with the older edition is somewhat limited (the Russian edition while I was on my mission), so I can't make comparisons, but there's really no need.  The point of the manual is written on the front cover: "[to] come to the knowledge of their Redeemer and the very points of his doctrine, that they may know how to come unto him and be saved" (1 Nephi 15:14).

Historically, I have not always been as good as I should be about reading the lesson manuals.  I made it a conscious goal to read all the way through this one, and I was not disappointed.  When the Church first announced that this book would be used as the main course of study, I know that some members of the Church complained, saying it was too basic or whatever.  I have had no complaints.  As stated above, these basics are the things with which one builds a solid testimony of the all-encompassing nature of the gospel and the Church.  It was awesome to be reminded again in plain and simple terms — and the gospel is plain and simple — the incredible blessings that await us if we but do our small part.  There's not a chapter that doesn't point back to the Savior and all that He did for us.  There's not a chapter that doesn't reference the plan of salvation with our Heavenly Father at its head.  Reading through the manual is a great way to polish up your knowledge of the gospel.  You will also feel that your testimony has been reinforced, probably because it has been replanted on a solid foundation that not only simply withstands the troubles that come our way, but allows us to fight back, if necessary, and move forward.

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The Gift of Fear

Everyone fears one thing or another.  Some fears are what most people would consider rational.  Others, such as acridophobia (the abnormal fear of grasshoppers) and apiphobia (the abnormal fear of bees) are what most people would consider irrational.  Sometimes, we are gripped by fear of things that aren't even real, which is probably a step down from the usual phobias since at the very least, bees, grasshoppers, and the like are real things.  As a kid I had the occasional nightmare, just like most kids.  One that I remember particularly well was a dream about small, brown aliens.  The dream started out as a National Geographic-type show with a guy in a blind hunting these little aliens.  Later, the aliens made it to our house in Centerville, came through the window well (of which I was already deathly afraid because a muskrat had once fallen in and made the typical scratching and scurrying noises), and wreaked havoc in our house.  We were able to trap them in the basement bathroom, but when they learned how to flush themselves down the toilet, they were able to get out of the house and reintroduce themselves into the environment and again enter our house.  I awoke from that dream sweating profusely, sure that, in the middle of the night, all alone in my basement bedroom with two window wells, I was sure to become the aliens' next victim.  Odd shadows around my desk only assured me that hordes of the little creatures were hiding underneath or behind the desk.  I lay awake for a couple hours in an adrenaline-fueled vigil, tightly cocooned in multiple slowly-becoming-soaked-with-my-sweat blankets, waiting for the aliens to emerge from their hiding place to attack.  It never happened, and I fell back asleep.

In his book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (ISBN: 978-0-440-50883-0), Gavin de Becker attempts to help people push irrational fear out of their lives so they can be properly attuned to true fear, which he claims is a positive aspect of our bodies' natural reaction to things.  Fear, he says, helps us respond appropriately to situations that have a real chance of resulting in our being harmed or killed.  De Becker is an expert on security issues, criminal justice, and public safety.  His book reflects that in that most of the examples and the topics of discussion involve things like corporate safety, dating safety, and child abuse.  As one with a wide range of experience — personal, research, and professional — the examples given are not only gripping, but provide lessons learned.  De Becker explains how we can often predict violence and gives some suggestions on how to get out of those potentially violent situations with minimal damage done.  As someone who has found much of what Glenn Latham says in his book The Power of Positive Parenting: A Wonderful Way to Raise Children to be true, I was intrigued by de Becker's claim that stalking, whether from an estranged spouse to a crazed fan to a disgruntled employee or anything in between, can usually be solved by ignoring the stalker.  The overarching message of the book, of course, is that our natural intuition will help us in most dangerous situations, but only if we are informed enough to not have our head full of worries and anxieties caused by unfounded fear.

While the message of the book was a good one, I was rather underwhelmed by the book.  While child abuse, spousal abuse (mostly wife abuse), rape, and stalking are real problems, I found that robbery, burglary, and assault were under-represented in the book.  I wanted to know how to deal with walking down the street at night and being met suddenly by a few people out of nowhere.  I found de Becker's obvious political leanings to grate on the reading.  His explanations of fear were solid, but always included a final note about how we got this through evolution.  The explanation stood without evolution — evolution or creation doesn't matter in this discussion; the fact that we work the way we do is sufficient.  The same line of reasoning applies to de Becker's grossly unfounded position on gun control.  In an appendix, de Becker goes so far as to say the right to bear arms is a "so-called right."  He may be a security expert, but he's obviously no historian.  He should just leave politics out of it and tell us how to deal with violent people who happen to have guns.  Finally, I was no big fan of the author's philosophy, even though it's a wide-spread philosophy.  He claimed we only truly fear something when death is the result of that something (this is based, in part, on the current interpretations of evolutionary theory (and maybe on older interpretations, but I don't know enough about them to really comment)).  This is, of course false, and the author admits as much when later in the book he writes that we truly fear only that which can harm us or kill us.  There are many things I fear worse than being killed, and being educated about those types of crimes would vastly improve the book as would a little more effort on de Becker's part to focus on the subject at hand and not tangential opinions.

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Blue Planet in Green Shackles

When I was a kid I had a book titled something like 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. At the time, the ozone hole over Antarctica and the impending ice age were all the rage. I remember how there were TV specials on PBS about the ozone hole. We read articles in those little newspapers from Weekly Reader or whatever at school telling us about what could happen to the earth should there be another ice age. The book was one I read through and actually thought some of the ideas were good ones. I think it influenced my life to a certain degree in what I admit is a positive way. I am inclined to recycle things (back when I was a kid there was only one word — recycle — not like the EPA slogan of today: "Reuse. Reduce. Recycle.") and reuse things like garbage sacks, lunch bags, and paper. At the time, the concept of environmentalism wasn’t in vouge, and most people who were trying to recycle or were into protecting endangered species were self-identifying as conservationists, probably because until the 1960s, relatively little in the movement had changed since the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, arguably the highest-profile conservationist in American history. I, too, thought of myself as a 10-year-old conservationist. While the movement has largely morphed into what is now known as environmentalism, a movement driven by much more leftist and radical principles, I still think of myself as a conservationist. There is, however, a large gap between conservation and environmentalism.

In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (ISBN: 978-1-889865-09-6), Czech president Václav Klaus presents his reasons for why environmentalism and its liberal, leftist, and radical tendencies is dangerous not only for the planet, but for people who cherish their liberty. The book is largely written from an economic point of view (Klaus is an economist by training), but also includes a chapter on the many scientific fallacies present in various environmentalist arguments for global warming (or, now that global warming has largely been discredited, the environmentalists have changed the label once again, and we have "climate change" to be all freaked out about). The economics-heavy chapters explain why environmentalist policies are bad for the economy and why they also tend to be bad for the planet. There is also a section on how environmentalist policy limits economic and personal liberty. Finally, Klaus gives the reader a policy recommendation regarding so-called climate change: do nothing. Based on his analysis of real numbers (in contrast to environmentalists, who have brought us endless fake numbers, including the famous so-called statistics of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and those rain forest destruction statistics, that if true, would’ve resulted in the complete extermination of rain forests decades ago), Klaus convincingly points out that slow and measured responses to problems are much more effective at preserving solid economic conditions as well as personal liberty. When we look at everything as a crisis, we (or, at the very least, politicians) make knee-jerk reactions that almost universally compound the original problem. When you are facing a problem like global warming, which is far from having a scientific consensus, let alone from being fact, a reaction causes not a worse problem, but new problems.

I enjoyed the book, although I admit I had to spend extra time in the middle chapters where Klaus delved into economic theory. It can be tough to get through, but if one spends the time necessary to think it through and analyze what he’s saying, it makes sense. The book, which is only 91 pages, is put together well, and the argument is laid out well. I also think that it will be unlikely to sway the true believers in global warming, but it should make them think about their position. It most definitely shores up the position of those who just can’t figure out the environmentalist movement. Finally, it really is a great work because the main idea is not necessarily that global warming or climate change doesn’t exist (like all true skeptics, Klaus is simply waiting for proof, not denying any and all possibilities) or that such-and-such economic policy is the one and only, but that without personal liberty, we cannot expect to live the life we want to live. We most definitely won’t have the economic blessings that we currently enjoy, and as poorly conceived policy continues to encroach on our lives, our basic freedoms and rights will also start to be taken away (remember that one of environmentalism’s closest relatives is the overpopulation of the earth and that those who express doubt concerning environmentalism or environmentalist policy are marginalized by the leftists). Given free rein, environmentalist policy has the potential to impact negatively everything from individuals’ decisions about their own families to global financial markets to essential freedoms of expression. This book serves as a solid warning and should be a call to arms for those who prefer to make decisions for themselves.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Gulag: A History

If one has ever studied or read about Russia, even if only to a very slight degree, one has heard about the Gulag. While Gulag (sometimes written GULag to more closely represent the Russian acronym, ГУЛаг, from which it derives) technically indicates the Soviet government agency in charge of forced labor camps, it has come to mean the entire system of prisons and camps that the Soviets, especially Stalin, used to so brutally abuse their own people from the time Lenin took power to the end of Gorbachev’s reign. I had probably heard about it throughout my life, but it really captured my interest and became something I wanted to learn more about as I learned about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writings (at BYU I even read, in English, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). The idea of reading other Gulag memoirs has also fascinated me.

Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning and critically acclaimed-by-everyone book, Gulag: A History (ISBN: 978-1-4000-3409-3) is, obviously, not a memoir. Instead, it draws heavily on memoirs and other existing literature, including what little has been made available by the Russian government in their state archives, to give the reader an idea of just what the Gulag was, how it functioned (or didn’t function, as the case may be), who ran it, why they ran it, who the prisoners were, and why it, like the Soviet Union, eventually came crashing down as the result of an implosion more than anything else. The history is quite detailed and dutifully footnoted. It takes the reader from the pre-Bolshevik use of forced labor in imperial Russia through the very end of the system with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every angle of the story is explored, some of them in more detail than others, but always in such a way that the impact of a particular decision or event is clearly seen. The individual anecdotes that make up a significant portion of the book are both colorful and illustrative, often giving an even more detailed look at what it was like to live, work, and sometimes die (interestingly, it wasn’t all bad, and there was time in some camps for music, theater, and storytelling) in the notorious prison camps of the Soviet Union. One comes away with not just a basic overview, but probably an intermediate-level understanding of the Gulag thanks to the complete coverage of the subject by the author.

I enjoyed the book and found it to be well-written history. As with all things having to do with the Soviet Union, the stuff about the October Revolution and the early struggles by the Bolsheviks to stay in power did little to hold my interest. However, the book had my full attention by the time it got to Solovetsky, the first official camp of the Gulag. I found most of the stories telling about day-to-day life in the camps to be fascinating. It seemed to me that Applebaum had her favorite sources, though, and I wish she would’ve quoted from a wider variety of memoirists. Sometimes I felt like I was reading Evgeniya Ginzburg’s book and not Anne Applebaum’s. Still, it was an impressive work. It was well-written and kept your attention. As with any grizzly subject, the book has sections that describe in detail torture (a favorite Soviet, especially in the early days, interrogation technique), the sexual depravity that is typical of prisons, and death. It is often somber reading because of the fact that it is a constant reminder of the ability of man to debase and treat with such cruelty and absolute disregard his fellow man. It is in this department that I have my largest quibble with the author — she concludes her work by saying that we don’t necessarily need to study the Gulag so we can avoid repeating it in some form or another in the future, since somewhere it will undoubtedly be repeated; we must simply remember it and try to understand it. One needn’t study something in great detail to remember it or memorialize it. Since Applebaum is not a philosopher, but a historian, she doesn’t even touch on the real reasons this cruelty happens (she sticks to political and economical explanations). The problem is, of course, that we can learn from it. Others can, too. In a best-case scenario, such a book will cause elites around the world to rethink their policies toward their political enemies. While that is unlikely, it can help each and every one of us rethink our individual commitments to avoid cruelty toward others in our own lives. It does no good to study history if we aren’t going to learn from it, apply its lessons, and avoid the same deadly mistakes.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Black Garden

It was probably during my first week in Russia as a missionary that I first met a Caucasian, but at the time I didn’t know it. I assumed that everyone I met was a Russian. I knew very little, if anything, about ethnicity and even about how citizenship worked. My companion, Elder Hall, and I, would often buy a watermelon from a guy, probably an Azeri, take it home, cut it in half, sit on the balcony and spoon out bite after bite. The balcony was very convenient because we could just spit the seeds out into the so-called yard below. Even by the time I got home from my mission I didn’t know about the many ethnic peoples of the former Soviet Union. I knew most Armenians had names ending in -yan (-ян), but I once asked a guy I bought tickets from on eBay if he was Russian because I noticed that his last name ended in -shvili (-швили). He was kind enough to respond and pointed out that such a suffix indicates a person of Georgian descent. Since then, in part because of the Russian wars in Chechnya that have put the Caucasus, more or less, on the map of more Westerners, I have become more familiar with the people, the customs, and the states of the Caucasus region, or Transcaucasia as it is sometimes called. Since I knew Armenians on my mission and while at BYU, my interest in the region was sparked a little more, and I have tried to learn about it and understand the complexities of the region.

The Caucasus is a complex region because it has traditionally been a bit of a crossroads and its famous mountains have always made it strategically desirable. This situation was the same during the Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988–1994 (the uneasy cease-fire has more or less held since then to the present day). Like most anything in the Caucasus, a romantic region shrouded in mountain mystery, the truth about the current strife between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis (and the Turks) is not always easy to come by. Although the war was long over by the time of my mission, I was not alone in knowing nothing about Nagorno-Karabakh, and longtime Caucasus expert and journalist Thomas de Waal tried to solve that problem for people with his 2003 book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (ISBN: 0-8147-1945-7). De Waal’s book is an attempt to acquaint the Western reader with the region, its history, and the modern-day conflict. He focuses on XX-century history, and the reader is acquainted with how Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan came to be. Then, the majority of the books is spent dealing with the details of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. De Waal is meticulous in his presentation of the story of the war from Yerevan, Baku, and Stepanakert. The book concludes with an overview of the negotiations process since 1994 and how they have proved rather fruitless. De Waal, unlike many writers on the subject, offers no faultfinding, finger-pointing, or one-sided calls to action, just a simple overview of a historical subject.

I enjoyed de Waal’s book. It obviously helps that I have an interest in the region and an interest in the former Soviet Union as a hobby, but when the world is faced with many such so-called frozen conflicts (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria), potential candidates for frozen conflicts (Somalia, in my opinion), and regions that have technically ended such conflicts but where violence ever threatens to erupt (Kosovo), one should learn about them and understand them, especially because it seems that the U.S. is the only country with the determination and leadership to deal with these things in any even remotely effective manner. It is very hard to find objective information about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, so de Waal’s work was rather refreshing. He included information from his discussions with top political leaders, military men, and everyday citizens on the streets. Some were full of the over-the-top rhetoric one typically finds when researching the topic; others were more measured in their responses; still others were people who could see past their obvious pain and realize that continued enmity is not a solution to a problem that continues to affect millions of people. In other words, de Waal’s approach was very even handed and as free from bias as one could probably be after coming to know so many people on both sides of the conflict. Or, maybe that’s the point: he is able to be so even handed because he has met so many people on both sides and sees them for what they are — people, brothers and sisters — and not a far-removed, unfeeling, harsh, and cruel enemy.

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