What with all the anti-vaxxers i am beginning to think a huge majority of people are dangerously uneducated and gullible. The black wave happens among those people. Trump gets elected by those people. We have yet to find an answer for this and that is pretty fucking terrifying. ( )

I've read several books about the Middle East, Muslim governance, the multiple wars in the area (civil and otherwise), and the huge affects of oil discovery on the area economy. With that in mind, this book was a bit of a review of many events and situations of which I was already well aware. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find myself feeling like a person working on jigsaw puzzle where all of a sudden someone had taken pieces that I had been staring at long time and pointing out where they fit in this huge puzzle of the Middle East. The author concentrates on Iran and Saudi Arabia, but the series of events in many parts of the Middle East took place in very close proximity to each others. In February 1979, the reign of the Shah of Iran falls and the Iranian Revolution and the Ayatollah Khomeini sets the country on a dramatically different course. A month later, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty is signed, creating disturbing rumblings throughout the Muslim world. Four months later in July, Saddam Hussein seizes control of the Iraq government. Four months later still in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, radical Islamists seize the Grand Mosque, an event that had nowhere near the same publicity in America at the time that the Iranian Revolution had. And, of course, just one month later, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. There were other actions in Syria, Pakistan, and Lebanon not long before that also served to essentially be prep work for the dynamics that the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the Grand Mosque had set into motion the great rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Some years ago, I read a book centered on the Israelis involved in the Six-Day War and the aftermath for several years. I noted in my review that my biggest take away was my new found knowledge of how much Israelis hate each other. Not so long ago, I read another book that went into great detail about how Israelis and Muslims seemly were compelled to assassinate each other. And now we have a book that makes it abundantly clear how much Muslims hate each other. Ugh! Yes, I'm over simplifying. Everybody had more than enough reasons to hate each other, so why not kill all of them. One last point: the author actually makes a point at the end of the book about her optimism that things will work out. She had just given the reader every reason to come to a very different conclusion, but maybe she'll explain herself better in her next book. I'm certainly not convinced. ( )

Kim Ghattas' book "Black Wave" provides a look into the recent history of the Middle East. There's an early focus on the year 1979, which saw the Iranian Revolution, the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There's an examination of the Sunni - Shia conflicts which persist to this day, the Iran - Saudi Arabia antagonism, and a review of many of the other major countries in the Middle East.

As she states, she wrote the book for "... readers who want to understand why events in the Middle East continue to reverberate around the world. I wrote it for those who believe the Arab and Muslim words are more than the unceasing headlines about terrorism, ISIS, or the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Perhaps above all I wrote it for those of my generation and younger in the region who are still asking, 'What happened to us?'... ".

When you're asking that general question, "what happened to us", it's clear that things have gone very wrong in the Middle East in her opinion. Detailing those unfortunate circumstances, the harshness of strict fundamentalist regimes, the lack of freedoms, etc. was disheartening to me, and left me feeling discouraged about improvements in the foreseeable future.
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When I finished Black Wave I had to step back and take a deep breath. It's hard to believe a book could be this good. ( )