Publisher’s Weekly starred review
My first official critical feedback came in today from the trade magazine Publisher’s Weekly, which gave A Privilege to Die a starred review.
Publisher’s Weekly
Posted June 28, 2010
Starred ReviewA Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel
Thanassis Cambanis, Free Press, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4391-4360-5
American journalist Cambanis has spent much of the last decade observing the Middle East from within its most intractable struggles, most notably while on the front lines of Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. The extremist Shi’ite organization is notorious for not granting high-level access to Western journalists and for tightly controlling whatever lower-level representatives might say, but Cambanis spent three years getting past the script “to write with humanity about reviled characters.” Interviewing fighters in the field, nurses tending to the wounded, refugees on the road, and think-tank pundits enabled him to probe the real motivations, histories, and ambitions of Hezbollah’s followers and better understand their devotion to “war without end” and an “ideology designed to rebound and flourish under assault.” As such, Cambanis provides crucial insights to those who might hope to counter Hezbollah’s increasing power and influence in the region, as well as an important reminder that in any war, one’s enemies are human. (Sept.)
