| Elvis Is Titanic: Classroom Tales from Iraqi Kurdistan (Vintage) | 
 enlarge | List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.17
You Save: $4.78 (32%)
Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1751573
Category: Book
Author: Ian Klaus
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Label: Vintage
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0307276899
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780307276896
ASIN: 0307276899
Publication Date: September 9, 2008 (In 4 Days)
Release Date: September 9, 2008 (In 4 Days)
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Not yet published
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Product Description
In the spring of 2005, twenty-five-year-old Rhodes Scholar Ian Klaus took a semester-long appointment at Salahaddin University in Arbil, the largest city in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Officially he was there to lecture on American history and to teach English. Unofficially he was there because he felt obliged, as a young American, to help make Iraq a stable and successful country. With assignments from Elvis to Ellington, baseball to Tocqueville, Klaus strives to illuminate the American way for students far more attuned to our pop culture than to our national ideals. Klaus's account of his unusual opportunity offers an astonishingly frank glimpse of life in the other Iraq after Saddam.
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| Customer Reviews:
 conventional wisdom for a third world reader June 11, 2008
I did not find this book very insightful. I think this book would be an eye opener for the many Americans that have not had any personal experience with people from third world countries. But as an immigrant from Argentina living in the US, the opinions and feelings expressed by the kurdish people regarding american policies abroad, ring very familiar to me as I have heard them many many times in my country of origin. It may surprise some americans that the US comes across to non americans as a bully. And in that regard the book is a good read to hear non americans talk about the USA image. But the collections of opinions is as raw as shallow, repetitive to no end. The book could be 2/3 shorter and we would not notice.
 Elvis Is Titanic Is a Great Read November 11, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A fresh and remarkably insightful look at what's going on in the Kurdish section of Iraq through the eyes and writing of a fresh and insightful young man for whom we can credit courage, respect and talent. His characters are real and interesting, as is he and the manner in which he shares with us his experiences with them. We should be reading more in the future from Ian Klaus.
Highly recommended August 30, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book: intelligent, incisive and entertaining. I learnt a lot about Iraqi Kurdistan (a part of Iraq we usually don't hear so much about), but also about American culture and values. In fact, it is the interplay between American values and how they are received in Kurdistan that makes this book so interesting. Plus, many of the classroom stories are just hilarious...
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