Tower of the Sun: Stories from the Middle East and North Africa

Michael Totten's Tower of the Sun: Stories from the Middle East and North Africa is one of those books that makes me feel how little of the world I know. As a refresher from the last Totten book I read, the travelogue of troubled regions, Where the West Ends, Totten is a Beirut-based, American journalist with a penchant for exploring the Middle East (naturally, for someone based in Lebanon) and other flash point regions in the world.

Tower of the Sun focuses on Middle Eastern and North African countries in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Totten draws from a wide variety of sources, many of them very well placed, as well as his own personal observations and experiences, to draw an up-to-date and detailed picture of the region today. Not surprisingly, with few exceptions, Totten sees little reason for optimism.

Libya is a failed state. Syria is embroiled in a years-long civil war, in which it's difficult to decipher for which side one should root. Egypt has a history of replacing (sometimes even "electing") one authoritarian tyrant with another, and citizens in Lebanon can go to jail for speaking with citizens of Israel, regardless of where in the world or under what circumstances the conversations take place. All of which is to say nothing of the current elephant in the room, ISIS, which has only begun to appear on the scene as Totten wrote this. (It was published in 2014.) I have to say, Morocco really comes across as the shining example, here, as well as a potential vacation destination...

Anyone who loves current events or travel writing (or both - me!) should really enjoy Totten's work. One of the advantages of his books is that each chapter can stand on its own, so this is an easy book to pick up and put down 20 pages at a time.