I’ll be honest, I struggled with this book. I picked it up to read because it seemed like it would be a gripping account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq. I understand that it was her journal, but it just wasn’t a cohesive account in my opinion. There were way too many characters to keep track of, lots of information about her daily life, which was interesting, but interrupted the historically important events that were happening in and around her home. It was hard to keep up with the train of thought, and it skipped around a lot. I know that it is written from her diary, but it really just feels like stream of consciousness, random information, that you can get a few tidbits from. I’m sure there are better sources with which to learn about this time in history. I’m sorry to be so negative in my review, but for the few good tidbits I got out of this book, other than that it was really tough to get through, I wouldn’t recommend it to be read. I think that it could be redone in a more captivating way, so that you do not lose the readers attention, and that it could do justice to her experiences and accounts of what happened. One of the themes of the book is summed up well by the author “in the name of peace in humanity, thousands have to be killed. In the name of liberation, in the name of democracy, there will be military occupation.” The USA sucks. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is because of the historical information included in the book. That’s what kept me reading. Not her boring account of the birds outside her window.