obviously the individual who wrote a previous review on Pax's baathist links is the type of moron who skips over a books introduction... please take the time to read this excerpt:
"...Those who thought his blog was unduly critical of Iraq's `liberators' made dark insinuations about his parents'
Baathist connections. Eventually Salam blew his top, advising
his detractors to `go play Agatha Christie somewhere else.' His
mother, he said, had been a sociologist at the Ministry of
Education, but had given up her job when she was told she could
not make progress in her career without becoming a Party member.
His father had been an eminent economist, but had made a similar
decision when faced with the same choice. `You are being disrespectful to the people who have put the first copy of George
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in my hands . . . go fling the rubbish at someone else.'
In fact, the conspiracy theorists' preoccupation with his family's supposed regime connections misses one of the most compelling attributes of Salam's diaries: he directs his vitriol in all directions. In the last days of the war he managed to describe the Fedayeen, the Baathist loyalists mounting a guerilla defence of Baghdad in the space of two paragraphs as `sickos', `chicken s**t' and `creepy f**s'. If he has been less than reverential about Iraq's occupiers,
he has been harder still on their Iraqi critics..."

very well expected, the son of his father. read more about Adnan Janabi, under Saddam Oil Bribes.

Salam Pax's book (and indeed his blog too) are very interesting, exciting and funny. His little digs and endless sarcasm are amusing but also get across the message that he dosen't feel 'liberated' nor does he feel the need to be thankful to the Coalition for freeing his country.

His blog is fun, informative and thankfully has continued despite months of living in a dodgy police state and under a state of war and then (if that wasn't enough) several months of anarchy!

I can only hope that we can see the second book listing his adventures in the post saddam Iraq. Good luck Salam!

Salam Pax started out well. Then he got commercialized. The tone of his writing has changed dramatically, and the influence from the anti-war crowd has all but consumed his writing.

I'd love to tune back in years from now after he's been forgotten, to see if he returned to writing from the heart.

What is going on in people's minds while the politicians and leaders use their own peculiar vocabularies to justify whatever?
Salam, thank you, thank you for letting an Iowan get a view without the doublespeak.
Not many people could give the absurdities that end in bombs and invasion the kind of authentic black humor that Salam does. I laughed out loud a lot. The book reminds me of "Catch 22" despite the differences of culture, author's voice, time and place.
Salam is the author with whom I'd most like to have coffee. Or wine-he can pick. I'll pick up the bill.
oh, p.s. for you nitpickers about the title ordinary: If a bomb had killed Salam, I bet his name would have been collateral damage.
read this book.

I've been reading Salam's blog since before the war started, and continue to do so-- he is certainly no "ordinary Iraqi"-- His written English is better than 99% of Americans, his knowledge of Western popular culture is mind-boggling, and his snide digs at posturing of all kinds is world class. His genius brings us the gift of perspective and complexity in a situation reduced by American television to sound bytes and simple images.

Salam shares not only his political views but his opinions on music, pop culture and the absurdities of life in general, with the result that I now have someone in Iraq who I connect with intellectually and emotionally, who I worry about, think of, pray for. Not an American soldier (bless them too), but a citizen of Iraq who wishes for both peace and freedom, and who is deeply ambivalent about what is happening there.

Salam proves the saying that the "pen is mightier than the sword." No "ordinary Iraqi," indeed, but an extraordinary world citizen writing us missives from a surreal position.

Write on, Salam. And be safe.

This book was an incredible read...very smartly written by an Iraqi during the "liberation". I highly recomend this book to get a different perspective of the war.

I just finished this and it is wonderful! Salam not only talks about the devistation of his city and the hopes and fears he has of the future. Such topics would be interesting and worthwhile. But his discussions of music, tv shows, and the humor he maintains in the face of depressing scenes makes this book a great read.

Salam Pax is both ordinary and extraordinary, and his weblog-turned-book should be required reading for all Americans.

About the book: very readable, intriguing, and with a sense of humor our world leaders would do well to adopt. It gave me a great deal of hope, reading this book, that we, as world citizens, may be able to find common ground among all our different cultures. I wish we could pander to such 'ordinary' citizens of Iraq like Salam Pax, rather than to the extremist interests we as Americans always seem to end up in bed with.

Read it. Read it read it read it.

Salam is a fine and witty writer, and reading his dispatches is like having a friend in Baghdad. From many thousands of miles distant the war is reduced for us to a political issue; hearing it from Salam makes it immediately a story of human concerns. If you want a perspective from outside the American political power struggle over the Iraq war, from someone intimately affected, check this book out. Salaam says on his blog today that he doesn't like the title on this edition, I second that but obviously it doesn't change the worthwhileness of the contents.