It Is Amazing How, When All Possibilities

Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Belittle A Work Of Fiction By Trying To Turn It Into A Carbon Copy Of Real Life; What We Search For In Fiction Is Not So Much Reality But The Epiphany Of Truth.

This Is A Good Time To Ask Apologists For The Islamic Regime, Who Degrades Islam? Who Imposes Stoning, Forced Marriage Of Underage Girls And Flogging For Not Wearing The Veil? Do Such Practices Represent Iran's Ancient History And Culture, Its Ethnic And Religious Diversity? Its Centuries Of Sensual And Subversive Poetry?

When I Walked Down The Streets, I Asked Myself, Are These My People?, Is This My Hometown, Am I Who I Am?

There Is Little Consolation In The Fact That Millions Of People Are Unhappier Than We Are. Why Should Other People's Misery Make Us Happier Or More Content?

What Dazzles Us In Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra Are Not The Alluring Mythologies About The Evasive Queen, But The Astonishing If Rare Historical Facts That Schiff Has Meticulously And Lovingly Excavated. Schiff Offers Not Just Cleopatra's Story But The Story Of An Amazing Era, One That Has Vanished But Still Affects Us, Questioning The Way We Look At Myth, History, And Ourselves.