Know Thine Enemy PB

by Edward Shirley and Edward Shirly

Book Overview

This book gives an account of Shirley's trip into Iran as a spy to provide an insight into Iranian character. It is a vivid, firsthand portrait of the clash of Western and Muslim civilizations. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813335884
• ISBN13: 9780813335889
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Westview Press
• Length: 247 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Separating myth from reality

I have read Mr. Shirley's Know Thine Enemy, an accomplishment that seems to separate me from the the four or five other recent reviewers of this book. In fact, those other reviews (mostly unsigned) so obviously miss the point of the book that one wonders if they were not actually written by the shills of a certain three letter government Agency who was skewered so mercilessly by Mr. Shirley in his recent Atlantic cover article and forthcoming book. Since representatives of that same Agency have been quoted as saying they'll 'get' Mr. Shirley for daring to reveal that the Emperor has no clothes, I wouldn't put those reviews past them. Lord knows they were poorly-written enough to have been crafted in the halls of Langley.But let's stick to the book itself, shall we? In my opinion, it's a neat little gem and it provides a fascinating insight into a foreign culture, one vastly different from the world that the American Mr. Shirley was born into. The author's journey into Iran gives us a peek behind the forebidden curtain of that Great and Powerful Iranian Oz, so that we can see the harmless little old man back there pulling levers. As a result, it's an anti-Bond kind of book and it does not have a spooky ending. That's the whole point, of course, and it's a wonder to me that most of the other reviewers seem to have missed it.For example, several of these shill reviews ask 'Why didn't Mr. Shirley simply buy a plane ticket to Iran instead of sneaking in in the floorboards of a truck?' The answer is found in the book, of course (as are the answers to all of their other off-the-point and uninformed criticisms). At the time Shirely went in (years ago) it wasn't possible for gringos like himself, especially gringos KNOWN to Iranian Intel as CIA agents, to fly into Iran. He had to sneak in if he wanted to see the country that he had studied for so long from a distance. Now things are different, but they weren't back then and as a result those shill reviewers are essentially saying, 'Gee Gary Powers, why risk getting shot down in a U2 in 1960 when any dummy can fly into Moscow today and hire all the cheap vodka-drinking hookers he wants?" Things change and only when they change do we find out that our prejudicial attitudes were often in error. That's Mr. Shirley's point and it's not so hard to figure out from the book itself unless your real purpose is to discredit the author with cheap, inaccurate shots. It's certainly the point that any real reader without a frontal lobotomy will get because Mr. Shirley FULLY DESCRIBES what a big joke all his 'penetrate the forbidden city' preparations were proven to be when he gets inside Iran. He tells you how the Iranian people welcome him with a no big deal shrug of their shoulders. It's just the purposefully-paranoid-so-it-can-perpetuate-its-own-existence CIA who taught him to fear what lay behind the Persian Curtain. To miss that point, in this very well written book, is to be either an adipated, hu

View in the dark

Whoever cares about Iran or Persia can get something from this book. It's not much of a "journey" in the sense of a travelog, but the conversations and the few glimpsed scenes are worth the price. The author also provides lots of interesting, scholarly background, for example, on why Iranians feel so unlucky, and why the CIA is a sinkhole for good ideas. Maybe the saddest moment in the book was the brief chat the author had with an older Iranian, who practically begged to have US should bomb the mollahs. It's sad, not because the mollahs are human beings and should live in peace, but because the thought of the US doing something to rescue people is so old-fashioned.

This man is a great resource

The book, it's true, is not a great travelogue, but it is a tremendous insight into the Persian mind and Persian history, as well as into the pathetic posturings of CIA lifers, and into the author's own connections with Persia. As one of Hosein's relatives implores, "Please bomb the mollahs." I would be happy for the Persians if this could happen. Reminds me of Solzhenitsyn's wish, while he was a slave laborer in the USSR, that the US would drop a bunch of nuclear bombs on Russia, even if he happened to be nearby.

Fascinating window into the contradictory world of today's I

Ed Shirley is a former CIA employee who, after leaving the agency, embarks for reasons of his own on a journey through modern day Iran. A fluent Farsee speaker, he hires a guide in Turkey and is smuggled across the border. He visits and talks with everyday Iranians--merchants, professors, people he meets in the coffee houses. He encounters no hostility, open curiousity, and a generally warm attitude toward "the Great Satan." The Iranian people, he discovers, still like Americans--although they don't always agree with the views of our government. A wonderful travelogue and an excellent source of understanding of the complex Persian culture.