The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
The Places in Between was named one of the best books of the year by someone or other. It didn’t do that much for me. Although I’m sure it was an impressive journey – walking across post-Taliban Afghanistan and through snow-covered passes – it’s not an impressive book. There’s no common theme or dramatic impact. It’s the worst of travel writing, where you find out too much about what specifically happened and not enough about something more universally applicable.
It does do a good job of making the point that most Afghanistans having very little knowledge about what’s going on with world politics and they certainly aren’t participating. These people barely know what’s going on in the next town over and they’re too busy fighting, or being afraid of, each other to bother with us.