At Your Own Risk: An American Chronicle of Crisis and Captivity in the Middle East - Hardcover

Sutherland, Jean; Sutherland, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555912559 ISBN 13: 9781555912550

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing, 1996

Synopsis

More than a hostage story, this is a rare portrait of the Middle East that transcends the Sutherlands' personal struggle to place a turbulent decade in the Middle East in perspective.

About this title

About the Author

Tom Sutherland is professor emeritus at Colorado State University.

Reviews

In 1985, Tom Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut (and formerly a dean at Colorado State University), was seized by Islamic Jihad terrorists. His wife, Jean, a teacher and administrator at AUB, spent six and a half years working for his release, traveling back and forth from Beirut to Washington, meeting with Bush, Reagan, George Schultz and other politicians involved in the hostage crisis. In captivity, Tom shared tiny, dank spaces with an ever-shifting roster of fellow hostages, among them Terry Anderson and Terry Waite. Tormented by his captors, he kept his sanity through meditation, reading and conversation. Told in alternating chapters by Tom and Jean, and interspersed with diary excerpts, this vivid, harrowing account of their ordeal offers a close-up of Lebanon, a cauldron of Christian, Muslim and Druze clashes, Syrian incursions, Pan-Arabism and Palestinian refugee camps. After Tom's release in 1991, the Sutherlands returned to Colorado and Tom became a professional speaker.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The unremarkable record of a college dean's six-and-a-half years as a hostage of the Islamic Jihad in Beirut. Husband and wife Tom and Jean Sutherland, he the dean of agriculture and she an English teacher at the American University of Beirut, have turned Tom's 2,354-day hostage ordeal into a book to be read at your own risk. Tom is no Terry Anderson or Terry Waite (his longtime roommates in captivity), and At Your Own Risk offers neither the human nor the religious and political insights to compete with the more eloquent books covering the identical experience. The Sutherlands' suffering is real enough, but they come off as cool, petty, and humorless. They don't explain why Tom ignored warnings from the US government and accepted an administrative post at a campus in a virtual war zone, crawling with members of several Palestinian guerrilla groups with whom he seems at times to sympathize. But the dean is even a mediocre anti- imperialist. Deep in captivity, when we seek his profound ruminations about life, freedom, love, and war, we learn that Sutherland preferred the enhanced salary and prestige that American University offered over Colorado State University. In captivity, he is ``terribly worried about the impact of this whole thing on my career.'' While Jean is tirelessly meeting with government officials and attending yellow-ribbon-tying ceremonies for Tom, he is bemoaning his inferior chess game and his inability to read as well as Terry Anderson. The boredom is breached when the hostages get a radio, and there is a rare moment of emotion when Sutherland hears a birthday greeting from his family. Hungrier for attention than an Oprah guest, the finally freed Sutherland gushes, ``What an ovation! . . . it made up for all those years.'' Readers are likely to be embarrassed by the closing crescendo of self-congratulation. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From 1984 to 1991, the Islamic Jihad held hostages in Lebanon, and most of the survivors have written books about their ordeal. Although their experiences were the same, their accounts differ in their perceptions. Sutherland and his wife give a detailed description of their lives during his six-and-a-half year captivity. As a family memoir, their book resembles Ann Kerr's Come with Me from Lebanon (LJ 10/1/94). In recounting the day-to-day existence of the prisoners, it resembles Lawrence Jenco's Bound To Forgive (LJ 6/15/95). Unlike those books, however, it shows little understanding of the political realities that compelled the captors to do wrong in order to call world attention to their plight. For large general collections only.?Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555912559
• ISBN 13: 9781555912550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448