From Smoke Signals to Email Book

A juvenile's introduction to the people, culture and land of Tunisia. Aimed at, I'd say, middle schoolers or so, this is a very thorough and readable summary. At times, its simplified structure is a weakness. When thousands of years of rather complicated history, encapsulating many waves of conquerors, some by proxy, is dealt with in a few pages, a rather limited understanding is perforce to follow. At other times, the brevity of the text is a strength: geography, modern history and cultural mores are explained well.

I found the text rather biased toward Islam, which possibly isn't surprising. But the phrases "women are protected by but subordinate to men" and "Mohammed began receiving revelations from Allah (God)" (with no qualifier "is said to have" or "legend has it" --- compare the more typical phrasing "the Jews believe they are children of Abraham." As a primer to this north African country, though, it's very good.