My School's September 11th Memorial

In the years that I have been at my college, my school memorializes September 11th by putting flags, in the ground of the school's park, for each person that died on that day. Most of the flags are U. S. flags, but there are also flags from other countries that represent those who died who were from other countries. I did not take pictures of the flags this year, but I did take pictures from last year. To see what I am talking about, here are pictures from September 11, 2007:

I think there is a flag for every person that died, but you can't see them all since I was unable to capture of all of the flags in one picture. (I realize the quality of the pictures are poor, but I have a cheap digital camera. )

Military History Reading Challenge: Book Review 2

For the second military history book that I had to read, I chose Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Risked Everything for Private Jessica Lynch by Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief and Jeff Coplon (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003). Although I am not completely sure if this book would fit into the military history category, I chose to read this book primarily because I had wanted to read this book for some time and because this book is a recounting from a civilian's point of view an event that occurred a few years ago during the Iraq War.

This book, though, is just more than about why Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief chose to help Private Jessica Lynch; it is also a book about his life under Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi culture and his experiences of life during the three most recent wars Iraq had been involved in. In short, the book is part autobiography and part memoir. Additionally, his description of how life was under Saddam's government does make it very clear that his decision to help Private Lynch was putting whole family at risk; his wife, daughter, siblings and father also could have faced reprisals for what he did. And even if he did have some legitimate grievances against Saddam's government, I did not feel that that was his main motive in wanting to help Private Lynch. From my reading, I gather that he was motivated more by compassion and humanity than anything else.

Of course, this is just my opinion of the book. I think it is a very good and interesting book, and I enjoyed reading it.

Summer Challenge: Book Review One

As some of you might remember, I decided to participate in the summer challenge to read five non-fiction books. Well, I've already finished reading the first book. (What can I say? I'm a fast reader.) I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post these reviews as I finish reading them, or if I'm supposed to wait until the end of the challenge. I guess I'll just make another post when I'm finished that links all of the five reviews together.

The first book I chose to read was Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations by Charles Wilkinson (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005). The book is 383 pages long, excluding the end notes, index and bibliography, and probably falls into the category of Native American Studies or recent U. S. History. (The back of the cover lists it as a cultural studies/Native American studies.) Anyhow, the book deals with the experiences of Native American tribes over the past fifty years or so, and how the Native Americans were able to strengthen their tribes and culture over this time period. In addition to explaining events that occurred in the last half-century, the author gives background history on the struggles that Native Americans have had over the past several centuries. The book as covers the different policies that the Department of Interior and U. S. government had implemented to deal with Native Americans, especially to get Native Americans to assimilate into American society.

Overall, I thought the book was quite interesting. I did learn quite a bit about the past several decades about the history of the movement for Indian rights, and I also learned more about the policies that the U. S. government had enacted to deal with the Indians. I chose to read this book as I did not know very much about Native American history nor very much about the policies that the U. S. government created. Since Native Americans are only briefly mentioned in most U. S. history textbooks, I wanted to learn more about the role that Native Americans played in U. S. history and about how the Native Americans were treated. In all, I think this is a good book for someone to read if he or she is interested in learning more about Native American history.