A very thought-provoking memoir. Bird grew up in various Muslim countries (his father was a diplomat) and was extremely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He married the daughter of two Holocaust survivors and then gained a more sympathetic understanding of Israeli history which caused him to moderate his views somewhat. His conclusions are rosier than I believe to be warranted, but I still think this is a must-read if you are interested in the history of this area. ( )

A very thought-provoking memoir. Bird grew up in various Muslim countries (his father was a diplomat) and was extremely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He married the daughter of two Holocaust survivors and then gained a more sympathetic understanding of Israeli history which caused him to moderate his views somewhat. His conclusions are rosier than I believe to be warranted, but I still think this is a must-read if you are interested in the history of this area. ( )

When writing about the Middle East, it is constantly challenging to separate rhetoric from personal experience and impressions from stereotypes. The difficulty of separating the personal from the historical and rhetorical is clearly apparent in Kai Bird's rambling memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 .

Bird’s intentions may have been to create a book that melds his memories of a childhood in Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Egypt with a historian's perspective on the major events that he experienced firsthand as an expat in the Arab World. He manages to do this more or less successfully in the first few chapters, providing intriguing insight on everything from life in post-1948 East Jerusalem to the beginnings of the Saudi oil empire and diplomacy in Nasser's Egypt. However, the later chapters become confusing as Bird needlessly tries to reconcile the (false) dichotomy between his affinity for the Arab World and his marriage to an American Jew, whose parents fled the European Holocaust.

The later chapters cover the experiences of Bird's in-laws during the Holocaust and discuss the origins of Zionism. Although the stories are very interesting, it is unclear why Bird felt compelled to include these chapters in what is supposed to be a historical memoir of his own experiences in the Middle East. It is a shame that it seems to be an unwritten requirement that books on the Middle East published in the United States today must include a discussion of the Holocaust and Zionism, as if to justify Israel's actions and the political situation in the Arab world. These 'required' chapters would make a great book on their own; but they have no place in Bird's memoir.

While a similar self-conscious need for 'balance' shows through in Bird's discussion of his childhood in East Jerusalem, the chapters on Egypt and Saudi Arabia in particular are interesting. Bird's narrative is based on his own observations and the stories and papers of his father, an American diplomat. Bird lived in Saudi Arabia when American presence in the kingdom was still a new reality and a source of intense friction. Bird describes the strange world inside the ARAMCO compound, and the many ways in which the oil business drove political relations between Saudi Arabia and the US during that time.

A good memoir should contain amusing anecdotes, historical facts and a healthy dose of introspection. Bird's memoir contains the first two elements but fails to delve sufficiently into his clear personal struggle between his fondness for the Arab World and the current political reality in the US, which seems to demand that his marriage to a Jew should be diametrically opposed to his sympathy for the Palestinians and his regard for Arab culture and history.

By Nour Motawa - Writer for http://www.Cairo360.com

This memoir is well-written and quite interesting since it provides readers with the unusual perspective of its author Kai Bird, a historian and journalist who was raised in the Middle East in Arab countries and who marries a Jewish American journialist. I didn't always agree with his politics but I still found his accounts of his personal narrative fascinating and I learned a great deal about three turbulent decades of war and conflict in the Middle East. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in this topic. ( )