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A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East
Gotham
November 2007
On Sale: October 25, 2007
288 pages
ISBN: 1592403247
EAN: 9781592403240
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Defying foreign government orders and interviewing
terrorists face to face, a young American tours hostile
lands to learn about Middle Eastern youth—and uncovers a
subculture that defies every stereotype. Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted
to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand.
During his undergraduate years Cohen travelled extensively
to Africa—often to wartorn countries, putting himself at
risk to see the world firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes
Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic,
read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle
East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of
incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try
to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he
focused his research on Muslim youth. The result is Children
of Jihad, a portrait of paradox that probes much deeper than
any journalist or pundit ever could. Written with candor and featuring dozens of eye-opening
photographs, Cohen’s account begins in Lebanon, where he
interviews Hezbollah members at, of all places, a
McDonald’s. In Iran, he defies government threats and sneaks
into underground parties, where bootleg liquor, Western
music, and the Internet are all easy to access. His risky
itinerary also takes him to a Palestinian refugee camp in
southern Lebanon, borderlands in Syria, the insurgency
hotbed of Mosul, and other frontline locales. At each turn,
he observes a culture at an uncanny crossroads: Bedouin
shepherds with satellite dishes to provide Western TV shows,
young women wearing garish makeup despite religious
mandates, teenagers sending secret text messages and
arranging illicit trysts. Gripping and daring, Children of
Jihad shows us the future through the eyes of those who are
shaping it.
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