A poignant, sad tale. * Booklist * "Goldfarb draws a delicate portrait of his friend and of the growing chaos and disillusionment of Iraqi society." * Publishers Weekly * "Goldfarb does us an immense service with his sensitive, multifaceted portrait of a democratic, secular Iraqi patriot...Among the best of the growing number of accounts of the Iraqi war." -- John Brady * San Francisco Chronicle * "A sad and necessary book that distills all of the country's blighted hopes in one man. Shawkat...was one of the good guys." -- Dexter Filkins * New York Times Book Review * "Whether one supports or opposes the war, Goldfarb's book helps explain, at a person-to-person level, what is transpiring in Iraq and why." -- Bernadette Murphy * Lost Angeles Times * "A moving story...An exciting account of Kurdish survival, a poignant justification for intellectual dissent against totalitarianism, and a depiction of active faith in the universal relevance of democracy." * Library Journal * "In the end, Goldfarb - a supporter of the US war and caustic critic of Saddam - concludes that the death of his friend is symbolic of the American failure in Iraq, from not preventing the looting after the invasion to the continued inability to provide security to the freed people." -- Greg Mitchell * Editor and Publisher * "Occasionally...there emerge individuals who rise above the surface and remind us all what is right and true, and why humanity will always have hope...Ahmad Shawkat was such a man. A Kurd raised in Mosul, a poet and a humanist, he was a lighthouse of inspiration for those who knew him. Now Ahmad's story may do the same for all of us through the vivid portrait painted with Michael Goldfarb's pen. The tragic story of his life, and murder, is on e that no historian or solder, no statesman or humanitarian, can afford to miss...Read this, and you will understand." -- Robert Bateman * author of No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident *
