Afghanistan

by David Downing

Examines Afghanistan, its history, conflicts, and the reasons why it is currently in the news.

Hardcover

About the author

David Downing is the author of a political thriller, two alternative histories and a number of books on military and political history and other subjects as diverse as Neil Young and Russian Football.

Reviews

[Oznasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having recently read and enjoyed 'Naveed' by John Heffernan which is set in Afghanistan, I am interested to learn more of the recent history of this country. I took a look in the children's non-fiction section of my local library where I found this one. Slowly I am learning and this book has made quite a good contribution to my understanding.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

So on the one hand this book had a wealth of information about Afghanistan... on the other hand, I really had *no idea* what to do with all the information and found this to be a really exhausting read. I have no idea who this text is intended for (the publisher says "middle school" but you have to be nuts to think this is middle school material). My school bought a class set for us to use prior to teaching The Breadwinner, since our students have no background knowledge or context of Afghanistan. The thing is, I don't think this book is a great one to use for teaching kids anything. It's got way too much information that's organized in a way that makes it very confusing. I felt very lost reading this and I am actually interested in this topic! I know that most adults would find this to be a challenging text. There's just so much history and this book tried to do way too much instead of breaking the information into manageable chunks.

Even though ti's only 50 pages, I had to break it up over two days because I felt like I was drowning in information. I'm probably going to have to reread this several times before it starts to make clearer sense. And I know that even though I will be forced to use this book I am definitely just going to pick out bits and pieces.