Interview with History and Power [Hardcover]

If you've never heard the melodic name - Oriana Fallaci - or are too young to remember her fiery, rat-a-tat interviews with the world leaders of the 1960s through the 1980s, then I would put this book on your Required Reading list. Gone now, a victim of cancer and not of a fatwa, Fallaci is beautifully-served in this compilation of her most fascinating interviews.

To say Fallaci was merely a feminist would be grossly underrepresenting the colors on her palette. Deeply moral, she somehow got away with treating her subjects with a frankness and disdain that would never be tolerated today.

"Imam Khomeini, you always talk about the West in hard or critical terms. All of your judgments make it seem as though you view us as champions of every ugliness, every perversity. And yet the West took you in when you were in exile, and took in many of your collaborators, many of whom actually studied in the West. Many studied free of charge, with scholarships. Don't you think that there might be something good in us?"

Imagine that? A journalist with a point of view.

Fallaci's point of view is what always set her apart from the pack. If you want to see the essence of her genius, you should read this treatise on the "humor of power" that ends with the Khomeini interview. Because she was highly critical of the Shah in power before Iran became the Islamic Republic, Fallaci was considered a hero in Teheran and was able to move about with ease in the new Republic. Surely, Khomeini expected her to immortalize him as the great savior of Iran.

That was his first mistake.

Fallaci has always been my hero. I used to root for her in her interviews. She always had the last word. But she was no mere provocateur. She was a brilliant writer, a light in the darkness for a lot of people, and she always told it like it was. She was warning the world. Khomeini got his hands on a copy of the transcribed interview and one month later "students" took American Embassy workers hostage.

When she died, Christopher Hitchens wrote about her in Vanity Fair. They were good friends, on par with each other philosophically and stylistically. Though she didn't publish as much in her later years, she never let up on the "stupid dictators" who were no better than their predecessors, no matter how much change was promised.

It's a shame she had to go so soon. She would have provided great commentary on the revolution in the Islamic world going on today.

Run and get this book. Five Stars. Great Read!

I must confess I approached the newly-published compilation "Interviews with History and Conversations with Power" by the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci with some skepticism. I first read the author's Interview with History when it was originally published, in 1977. At that time, most of the world leaders featured in the book were at the height of their power and influence. The remarkably candid observations and opinions they expressed in conversation with Fallaci were explosively relevant and contemporary. Now, all but one are either deceased or have left the public arena. Even the Dalai Lama, interviewed by Fallaci when he was 22, is about to retire. So I wondered whether this collection, comprised of many of the pieces from that earlier volume as well as some additions from the early eighties, would have any value other than as a collection of historical artifacts. I needn't have worried. This is an important and instructive book which confirms time and again the truth of the axiom "The more things change, the more they remain the same." For while Fallaci's sparring partners may have departed - indeed, Fallaci herself passed away in 2006 - the issues that consumed them and the turmoils they contended with and sometimes caused remain prominent in the headlines every day. With the exception of two Americans (Robert Kennedy and Henry Kissinger) and one European (Lech Walesa), the book focuses on figures from Asia and the Middle East - Golda Meir, Yasir Arafat, Indira Ghandi, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping, and others. Needless to say, discussions regarding settlements on the West Bank, the status of Jerusalem, the need for a Palestinian homeland, Arab oil, Muslim fundamentalism, and the Chinese economy remain crucial and controversial.

Fallaci was a famously courageous interviewer, and her intrepid nature is on clear display here. Always courteous, she nevertheless seems to relish asking the uncomfortable question, tenaciously pursuing her answer no matter how many times her quarry tries to shake her off. For example she continues to draw Kissinger into expounding on Vietnam, finally getting him to agree it was "a useless war," long after he's emphatically declared he doesn't wish to discuss the issue further. (He later called his encounter with Fallaci "...the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press.") At times her questioning is almost brutal. When Ariel Sharon complains that a published photo of an injured child in Beirut has been deliberately misrepresented, Fallaci takes a picture from her purse of a group of dead children, their bodies torn apart by Israeli bombing attacks and awaits his response. Nevertheless, she was frequently able to persuade leaders who rarely spoke to the press to grant her an audience. This can likely be attributed to her reputation for scrupulous accuracy and fairness. She's equally tough on everybody. Even when she admits to feeling fondness toward an interviewee, such as Golda Meir, whom she says reminds her of her mother, Fallaci pulls no punches. And because she transcribes questions and answers verbatim from tape recordings, no one can claim to have been misquoted.

Readers may wish the editors of this volume had been as painstaking in their proofreading. Frankly, the book's a bit of a mess, riddled with numerous typos. More than once this results in an incorrect word being substituted for the one the author obviously intended to use. It's an unfortunate distraction, especially when dealing with someone as meticulous in her use of language as Fallaci.

In introductory material to some of the chapters, Fallaci discusses the circumstances surrounding the interview and her personal impressions of the meeting. Her description of trying to obtain a chador to wear in order to enter the holy city of Qom and interview Khomeini is both harrowing and hilarious. In several instances she also puts forth the notion that those who seek to gain and wield power are often not the wisest and most worthy among us. Rather, she says, they're far more likely to be the very opposite. Her deepest contempt is reserved for those who seize power through a coup d' etat. Whether of the left or right, religious or atheistic, she considers them to be cowardly thugs who inevitably inflict misery on their people and create circumstances worse than those they've promised to improve. It's a cautionary point that bears keeping in mind as we observe the various revolutions continuing to unfold across the Middle East.

It's also interesting to note that the only dictator portrayed here as a genuine madman - Muammar el-Qadaffi - is the only one who still remains in power, some thirty years after these interviews were conducted. The more things change... - David Nichols

On the basis of material, this book is worth five stars and then some. Fallaci's reputation as a tough journalist is obviously quite well deserved; her questions and line of attack have something to make every one of her subjects uncomfortable, if not enraged.

A few things could have made the book far better:

I would have welcomed an introductory essay written by someone who knew Fallaci's work and history--perferably even someone who actually knew Fallaci personally, such as an editor who had worked with her. Considering Fallaci's reputation, the book offers practically nothing in the way of context or biographical information. Luckily, she herself talks about her own life here and there, but it would have been very easy to get someone to offer a five- or 10-page overview of exactly who Fallaci was, and why she was important. As it happens, the book's dust jacket offers the only source of this context outside of her own words.

Along the same lines: for most of the interviews, we get little introductory explanation about the times or the issues surrounding Fallaci's subjects. Some readers will already know the history of, say, Bangladesh's split from Pakistan, or Chinese politics in the years immediately after Mao's death, but it would not have been difficult to get an editor to write some brief, one- or two-paragraph introductions to explain some of the context for these interviews. Readers today might know most of the historical context here, but as time passes, fewer and fewer will. This makes me wonder whether someone reading this 20 years from now will appreciate Fallaci's ferocity and bravery; perhaps, but perhaps not.

In a couple of cases, Fallaci has structured the interviews as narratives, rather than Q&A; these in some ways are more effective, painting a better picture of how those interviews came to pass, and what they were like to conduct. It's too bad we don't have more of this. Understanding what Fallaci went through just to land interviews with Qadaffi and Khomeini makes those interviews even more unforgettable.

Unfortunately, the book tends to launch right into each interview with no preamble. A bit more context about the subject and his or her times would have insulted very few readers' intelligence. I would have preferred it.

And my biggest complaint of all: What a shame that the publisher, Rizzoli, did such a terrible job proofreading the book; it's not even apparent that they bothered at all. I found dozens upon dozens of errors--I'd bet there were hundreds, but I didn't keep count. It was a constant distraction to find errors of all types: misspellings (or sometimes words that were spelled correctly but obviously one letter off from the intended word), sloppy mechanical mistakes, subject/verb agreement problems, etc. Sometimes the editors even mislabeled questions and responses. It's inexcusable, and by far it's the main thing holding me back from a five-star review.

You might be wise to wait for Rizzoli to correct and re-publish this book, though I don't know if they have any plans to do so. (And if Rizzoli wanted to pay me to re-read the book and mark every error that I could find, I'd be happy to do that.)

So: I'd have loved to give this book five stars or more for the absolutely riveting material, but I'd give it zero stars for the amateurish editing. A real shame. I sense that Fallaci herself would probably have been furious about it.