I have received an advance (pre-publication) copy of Anthony Shadid's new book on Iraq, titled: Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. I am not allowed to say how or why I received it. So you did not hear that from me, and dont tell your neighbors and there is no need to wake up the children. Shadid's (the Washington Post's correspondent who previously wrote for the Boston Globe) dispatches from Iraq regularly stood above the rest of mainstream media. The book, is stronger when it allows Iraqis to tell their own stories, or when Shadid tells their stories, and less strong when Shadid offers (on occasions) generalizations and (too general) observations on history. I was amused that Muqtada As-Sadr's opposition to American occupation was characterized as "xehnophobic." It is now xehnophobic to oppose foreign occupation? I did not know that. Was the US xehnophobic in opposition British rule? Was the French Resistance xehnophobic in opposing Nazi occupation? Of course, As-Sadr is a fanatic demagogue whose vision for the future Iraq is horrific--doubly so for women in Iraq of course. But Shadid covers the plight of Iraqis under occupation very well, especially of collective punishment and of sectarian tensions aggravated by the US (and Macedonian) occupation. I will quote to you from the last page of the book: "Baghdad is a city of lanterns amid the blackouts, a city of ghosts shadowed by fear, a city that is forsaken. The city I knew would always remain ghamida [vague]."