Exit West / Mohsin Hamid / 231 pages

Exit West is about a young professional man and woman who meet and fall in love while living in a Middle Eastern city that is becoming overrun by militants. As the new couple deal with blackouts, lack of food, and increasingly strict rules over their conduct, a phenomenon begins. Doors begin appearing all over the world leading from one country to another in a blink of an eye. When our new couple takes one of the doorways to escape their war-torn land, they find more problems than they bargained for in Greece, then London, and finally America.

Exit West is a pretty slim book, and I read it one day yesterday. Usually a book that captures my attention like that is a book that I rate very highly. However, I was disappointed that the author did not bother to explain more about how these doors affect the world, especially when so many political and economic refugees start using them to enter countries that are considered "the West." The first half of the book deals only with how things are going in the unnamed Middle Eastern city, and the second half is about the flight, but it felt super rushed. Therefore, I'm going to give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East / Richard Engel / 256 pgs

Richard Engel is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC. Straight out of college, in 1996, Engel moved to Cairo to start reporting on world events. From there he moved to Jerusalem just before the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, and to Baghdad just before the start of the Second Gulf War in 2003. He's reported on war in Beirut, the toppling of Qaddafi in Libya, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Through it all, Engel does a very good job of painting in the picture of how hostilities in the Middle East began and continue. The book is easy to read and I found it to be one of the most unbiased works on the subject that I have ever encountered. That's saying a whole lot, considering the subject I am talking about. I would definitely recommend for those who would like to read about the media, a semi-autobiography, and especially those interested in the history of the Middle East conflicts.