What is this trend that we Americans seem to be following? We visit foreign country, meet the natives, learn very little about their culture and customs, and suddenly we are experts worthy of writing books on our experiences. This is the unfortunate case in this travesty. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea is the only person who could have celebrated Ramadan in Iraq without understanding the significance of the celebration. Her prose is boring, and every chapter is merely a very brief overview of the subject. I spent the entire book hoping the next chapter would be better than the one I was reading. It never was.