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"Rage" is right in this almost animal howl of pain and anger over the WTC attack from the great Italian journalist--and Manhattan resident--Oriana Fallaci. The targets of her rage are not just al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremists, but an Islamic world that seems unconcerned about reining in its own monsters, and a Europe which mostly reacted to 9-11 with a smug: "America got what it deserves". Drawing on a lifetime spent covering the Middle East and the world, a deep love of the Italy of her ancestors, and a passion for the America where she's found refuge, Ms Fallaci dances along the line between polemic and incoherence, but the obvious magnitude of the event at the center of the book keeps bringing her back on topic.

This is basically a bound version of the essay she wrote in the immediate aftermath (September 19, 2001) and many will have read it on-line at that time. It doesn't offer much in the way of analysis and it is too fresh in its pain to develop much context. But these are not the purposes it is intended to serve. What it does--as maybe only the contemporaneous columns of Mark Steyn can do better--is recapture for us just how righteous was our fury then. Too many are too soon losing the memory of what their visceral reaction to that day of mass murder was and are becoming entirely too detached from the signal event in our recent history. In a political climate where television won't even show us film clips of the attacks for fear of riling us up--quick, try to think of the last time you saw the planes hitting the Towers?--it's all the more important to preserve texts like this and remind ourselves of why the war on terror is so important. For if the rage fades will we still be proud enough to vindicate the dead?


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C+)


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Politics
Oriana Fallaci Links:

    -BIO: Oriana Fallaci: Journalist, interviewer and author (Giselle)
    -ESSAY: The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt: Thoughts on the eve of battle in Iraq. (ORIANA FALLACI, March 13, 2003, Wall Street Journal)
    : An interview with Oriana Fallaci. (TUNKU VARADARAJAN, June 23, 2005, Opinion Journal)
   
-PROFILE: THE AGITATOR: Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam (MARGARET TALBOT, 2006-06-05, The New Yorker)
    -INTERVIEW: The Soliloquy of Dakel Abbas: An Iraqi prisoner of war tells his story. (ORIANA FALLACI, April 3, 2003, Wall Street Journal)
    -ESSAY: Rage and doubt of a threatened civilisation (Oriana Fallaci, March 16, 2003, The Sunday Times)
    -ESSAY: I Stand with Israel: I Stand with the Jews (Oriana Fallaci, December 2, 2002, Corriere della Sera)
    -ESSAY: On Jew-hatred in Europe (Oriana Fallaci, April 17, 2002)
    -ESSAY: Oriana Fallaci on Antisemitism (April 12, 2002)
    -ESSAY: Anger and Pride (Oriana Fallaci, September 29, 2001, Corriere della Sera)
    -SPEECH: How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost (Oriana Fallaci, January/February 2002, American Enterprise)
    -INTERVIEW: Unquiet on the Western Front (Interview by ASLA AYDINTASBAS, February 2, 2003, NY Times)
    -PROFILE: The Rage of Oriana Fallaci (George Gurley, NY Observer)
    -ARTICLE: French court dismisses suit over Fallaci book (AP, November 21, 2002)
    -ESSAY: Oriana Fallaci's War of Religion (Alexander Stille, Council on Foreign Relations)
    -ESSAY: Writer ignites Italian pride and prejudice: Berlusconi's infamous comments on Islam have been trumped by a newspaper article that has sparked a storm of controversy in Italy (Philip Willan, October 3, 2001, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Bible of the Muslim haters: The popularity of a virulent new book shows how deeply Islamophobia has taken root in western Europe (Rana Kabbani, June 11, 2002, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Liberal voice of Italy savages 'Jew-hating' Left (Rory Carroll, June 2, 2002, The Observer)
    -ESSAY: Fallaci's Fight: France, where speech can be criminal. (Rachel Zabarkes, June 26, 2002, National Review)
    -ESSAY: Fallacism: Italian writer's hatred of Islam has roots in medieval Europe (Fereydoun Hoveyda, January 23, 2003, The Iranian)
    -ESSAY: Blast from the Past: Oriana Fallaci is Back to 'Spit On' Detractors of U.S. (Signs of the Times, October 2001)
    -ESSAY: Europe's New Crusade: Will the tolerant society survive the battle over Islam? (Sasha Polakow-Suransky and Giuliana Chamedes, 8.26.02, American Prospect)
    -POEM: So Who is Afraid of Oriana Fallaci? (Uche, 9 July 2002)
    -ARCHIVES: The New York Review of Books: Oriana Fallaci
    -ARCHIVES: "oriana fallaci" (Find Articles)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride by Oriana Fallaci (David Harsanyi, Weekly Standard)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Rod Dreher, National Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Charles Taylor, Salon)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Daniel Pipes, Middle East Quarterly)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Christopher Caldwell, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Robert Bove, The Texas Mercury)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Alberto Mingardi, LewRockwell.com)
    -REVIEW: of The Rage and the Pride (Marco Belpoliti, Foreign Policy)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Holy Writ: Recent writers on Islam need to be more stringent in their criticism. Stephen Schwartz is an exception (Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Monthly)

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