| Zeitoun (Vintage) |  | Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  157 reviews
Sales Rank: 202
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Reprint
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0307387941
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.8927076335
EAN: 9780307387943
ASIN: 0307387941
Publication Date: June 15, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
National Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book
An O, The Oprah Magazine Terrific Read of the Year
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year
A New Yorker Favorite Book of the Year
A Chicago Tribune Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Decade
The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 100
 True but reads like fiction September 3, 2010
Linda Rockhill
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The low key writing style of this author is the strength of this book. It's a true story about a real family and the actual events they experience as a result of hurricane Katrina. As most residents of New Orleans struggle to exit the city, Zeitoun chooses to stay to protect his properties and investments. The first thing that resonates with this book is the character of Zeitoun. He's a hardworking family man who immigrated to the United States from Syria. The events that unfold in the aftermath of Katrina are told from his perspective in a straight forward no nonsense style. He experiences the devastation of the storm followed by another nightmare, more potent and with longer lasting scars. He recounts the devastating effect of a society regressing to substandard mores and the result of being a Syrian immigrant during a national disaster. While reading I had to constantly remind myself this was not fiction and found it hard to believe such events could happen in America. It's an amazing story that is equal parts haunting and inspiring and leaves you wondering what else happened that was not reported. Some of the sections that deal with Zeitoun's background information are a little to long, but don't let that deter you from reading this piece of work
 cannot review because book's delivery is overdue August 31, 2010
Huston Horn (Pasadena, CA USA)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
OnTrac's delivery of books is awful. In my experience, books either go to wrong address or arrive overdue from two-day Prime promise!
 A MUST READ August 28, 2010
janja oczkowski
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We read this book this year after hearing wonderful things about it. It is a must read for anyone under the assumption that "it happens to the other guy" or that "it can't happen to me" referring to homeland security whisking away a family member and throwing away the key.
It was written in a simple and readable style which I believe was the best for this kind of story. We plan to give this book for christmas presents this year, not just to support the organizations founded as a consequence of these unthinkable violations of our civil and human rights, but also to spread awareness to those we know who are still under the illusion that it can't happen to them.
 Eggers disappoints August 27, 2010
Abe Ellenberg (Manhattan Beach, CA)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book turned out to be a disappointment. Based on Eggers' famous memoirs that I enjoyed tremendously, and on the Katrina subject matter, I had high expectations of a book that would provide a personal look at one of America's worst natural disasters. It started out that way, but the second half of the book descended into a weird account of an extremely anomalous experience of the disaster by one particular family.
The book focuses on the Zeitoun family. The husband is a Syrian immigrant, the wife a native American convert to Islam. They were fairly prominent contractors in NO when the hurricane hit. The initial story of the husband riding out the storm while the wife and kids evacuated, and the husband's early attempts to help others using a rowboat he happened to have, were pretty fascinating.
Then about halfway thru the book the husband is arrested and thrown into a makeshift prison in NO, deprived of his rights to even make a phone call, and essentially held incommunicado for weeks while his wife thinks he is dead. This is somewhat complicated by their Islamic/Arab roots, although ultimately that doesn't seem to have played much of a role in the official misconduct. The whole thing borders on the unbelievable, and much of it is essentially unsubstantiated. But the biggest complaint is that this was not the overwhelming experience of the flood for the vast majority of people, and as such is no more than a sideshow. The religious overtones of the whole second half of the book were also unwelcome. All in all, a huge disappointment and I probably will avoid Eggers in the future.
A Negative Review of the Novel August 21, 2010
Martmun
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
Reading Zeitoun by David Eggers captured my attention but I grew less and less enchanted; section V is unnecessary to the story portrayed and took away significantly from the impact of the novel. That David Eggers' is a fine writer there is no doubt, but the novel degenerates into moralistic harangue at the close which I found offensive and about which I was a bit resentful. By the time the reader gets to this section of the book, there is no doubt that there was no adequate operations, no system of support, in place to help survive a catastrophe. Eggers has done a fine job in the first sections of the novel of showing us just how devastated New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast is, by hurricanes Katrinia and Rita - there in no need for the demagogic preaching at the close of the book. The last section describes how poorly Zeitoun and his family, friends and the characters we meet in the novel fair after Katrina. Unfortunately it devolves into a preachy, proselytizing diatribe that detracts significantly from the novel and the horrific story revealed in the preceding pages.
The story is of a man who stays in New Orleans during and after hurricane Katarina, who is a builder / construction worker and a family man with a wife and 4 children . . . he's also an emigrant from Syria and a Muslim. And, although anyone who has ever been in Southeast Louisiana knows that there are no basements to homes because of the high water table, yet Zeitoun laments the loss of the basement floor of the home flooded on Carrolton Ave. - which is an example of either bad editing or carelessness on Eggers part. This mistake of craftsmanship also detracts from the book and makes Zeitoun a less believable character in the novel. Zeitoun and his family, like most New Orleanians, have a horrific, traumatizing experience with Katarina, and yes, this book portrays a stark look at the reality of chaos and catastrophe. The novel shows how we, as a society, are vastly under equipped and failed wholly to address a major catastrophic event like Katarina, further the novel explores how one individual does his best to help survivors and rescues others from harm and how that effort seems to mean nothing in the scheme of things. Particularly poignant is the interaction Zeitoun has with animals, dogs, left in New Orleans by homeowners upon evacuation. After Zeitoun's ordeal with the lawlessness in South East Louisiana through the hurricanes, Katarina and Rita, he returns to the animals to find them dead from starvation. This scene in and of itself emphasizes the depth to which chaos and catastrophe wracked the city and it citizens - there is no need for the proselytizing into which the last section of the book degenerates.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 100
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