PrePub Alert: LibraryJournal.com

April 11, 2011

Tags: Baghdad, iraq, Library, Ozzy, Review
Posted in: Other Ideas

An early review from the nice folks at LibraryJournal.com:

Van Buren, Peter. We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Metropolitan: Holt. Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780805094367.

A Foreign Service officer for more than two decades, Van Buren led the State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team in its effort to win over the Iraqis through invigorating social projects—like sports murals in violence-wracked neighborhoods and pastry-making classes to help folks supply goods to nonexistent cafés on rubble-strewn streets without water or electricity. Talk about the arrogance of trying to remake a world in our image without even knowing the world we are trying to remake. Billed as bitingly funny, though I’m not sure I’m laughing; an important book from someone who was there.

My book also beat out one by Ozzy Osbourne to be a “Pick” of the editor.

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