Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Seeing Things Differently, February 16, 2004
"Men in Black Dresses: A Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East" I am reading a wonderful book. It's one of those gems that every time you pick it up, it instantly carries you into an exotic, space of anticipation. I find myself leaning forward emotionally, eager to see what I am going to learn - what I am going to see differently, with new clarity. It's kind of interesting, because I forget about how great it is after we land or I fall asleep. I've been carrying it around in my bag now for a week now and each time I look at it - "Men in Black Dresses" - I remember the basic premise: author Yvonne Seng working her way through interviews with Egyptian Muslim sheihks leaders and discovering insights about Islam, and it sits there, kind of flat and academic. But each time I get finally get settled into my Boeing seat, and before we reach 10,000 feet where I can get out my laptop, I open up the black dress book and within two sentences I'm in Egypt - in a bazaar, or somewhere contemplating some deep truth or paradox. . . . experiencing, through her extraordinary prose, Dr. Seng's odysseys and forays in search of truth and meaning. This woman can really write. It's like a great novel - about real experiences, but focused on a search for truth. Most nonfiction books are not really "literature". They're not great stories, capturing you and moving you into sights, sounds, and smells of some other interesting place and introducing you to people you can really see in your mind. So, it's really rather extraordinary to find a book of big, great ideas that is also a really interesting story as well. You should buy Yvonne's book. You'll learn a lot about Egypt, Islam, the Coptic Orthodox Church, Syria, yourself . . . and you'll like it.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly (and extremely) disappointing, February 11, 2004
By A Customer
I ordered this book, based on the glowing New York Times Book Review article and the reviews here. I'd expected to read an informative, insightful, and well-written book. That is not at all what I found. First, the writing style. The breezy, casual style she slings about would be well-suited to a book about rock music or a character in an Evanovitch mystery, but hardly suited to a fairly serious topic by a supposedly credentialed scholar. It was a style out of sync with the subject material. -I wasn't necessarily looking to read a scholarly book, but I did expect this to be an intelligent book (which it wasn't.) I also found it difficult to like Dr. Seng, who comes across as a self-promoter, trying very hard to appear "cool". Second, -the substance of this book. Everything is black and white -- no nuances, no complicated characters. All the religious leaders she meets are magical, wonderful demi-gods. The questions asked in her interviews with them were at a grade-school level -- totally uninformative. I found it difficult to believe a well-educated person could write such a superficial and one-dimensional account. I managed to get through the book, through sheer stubbornness and the hope that it might improve at some point. (It never did.) One of those books where you're relieved to get it over with so that you can move on to something better. I'm in perplexed total disagreement with the positive reviews here.
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
surprising agreements on spiritual life, February 16, 2004
By A Customer
The most faithful-looking men I see on TV wear dark robes and carry automatic weapons. I simultaneously admire their faith and fear their wrath. I wish I could turn down the volume and sit quietly with these men; I yearn to hear whatever it is they are literally dying to say.Men in Black Dresses provides such an opportunity. Author Yvonne Seng trekked to monasteries, mosques and religious enclaves in order to listen. She sat with leaders ranging from The Grand Sheikh of Islam, spiritual leader to the world¹s billion Sunnis, to His Holiness Pope Zakka, head of the world¹s second oldest Christian church. "Throughout history, dogma has been mistaken for knowledge," a leading orthodox archbishop told her, "social division and problems can be traced to the entanglement of dogma in our modern life social problems are also theological problems." A professor of peace and Middle Eastern studies, Seng discovered surprising agreements among the Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders who spoke to her. They agreed that modern spiritual life has become distracted, that East and West alike have forsaken the heart for the ego, and that as our leaders confuse true power with material gain, the world is becoming a very dangerous place. -- Monte Paulsen, The Dragonfly Review of Books
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