Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, deeply moving memoir
Review: A sensitive treasure of a book, offering rare insights into the early life of one of our finest thinkers. Richly-drawn settings in Palestine, Cairo, and Lebanon, with fascinating details of school-life, friendships and the perplexing struggle of growing up in many places. A provocative journey examining complexities of exile and mysteries of families. Stunning prose, unforgettably honest and beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfailingly interesting but unfailingly pretentious
Review: Americans need to stop pretending that millionaires who spend their lives in the heart of the establishment - that is, people like Edward Said - are genuinely leftist. A profoundly silly man, born into a wealthy family and whose great need of bourgeois comfort is more than accomodated by the billion dollar universities that cater to the young affluent children who constitute his only admirers (people of impoverished countries have never heard of this man, let alone his "theory"), a man who writes badly (and thus wins actual literary prizes from wealthy foundations, even though he is neither original nor creative), and who has compared himself to Beethoven (!), is a misleading opinion-slinger, deeply and laughably "conservative" just like his colleagues in the establishment. I guess his general attitude is, "Who cares if 2 billion people are living on 1.50 per day in the contemporary world, I'm going to fly around with millionaire Jewish musicians and pretend they and I even give a crap about all those yucky impoverished people - good thing we keep them away from wealthy colleges that employ people like me!"Some day some critic will cast a cold glance at Said's life and write about him as he really is/was. He is part of the demise of the American Left, made fictitious by the pseudo-leftists with $20,000 per month spending habits.
Rating:
Summary: The Refreshing Background
Review: As a german palestinian, it was refreshing for me reading " Out Of Place". His late mother and my mother were very close friends, thus I came to know more of the background of this great and decent scholar. This intellectual is a detergent and a refreshment in these mendacious times. Times that are paved with the mendacity and filth of Justus Weiner and his advocates.
Rating:
Summary: Palestine land with people ...!!!
Review: Edward Said did it again for the sake of truth,justice and fairness for the Palestinian people ,whom he proudly belong to ,Edward Said broke many taboos and myths about the way Americans tend to veiw the Palestine -Israel conflict .
Said clearly says to the west ...take off your sun-glasses so you can see the truth...
for Edward Said I say great work ...you are the best America has to offer ,when it comes asking for advice about the bloody mid-east ..
Rating: 
Summary: Out of Place, Out of Mind...
Review: Edward Said's latest memoir is oddly devoid of the anti-Israel polemics that have characterized virtually all of his prior output. Considering Mr. Said's previous aspect - that of self-depicted "poster boy" for the Palestinian "naqba" ("disaster") of dispossession, one wonders why he has changed tack. While the book is interesting from a landscape and family point of view, there remains the nagging question of why this sea-change. Perhaps the recent controversy over Mr. Said's invented origins that appeared in Commentary Magazine's article that documented his now well-known obfuscations as to his Jerusalem upbringing was a motivator. Especially, the revelation that the real depredations suffered by his family came at the hands of Nasserite mobs (rather than his perennial villains - the Jews) when they burned and looted his family's extensive businesses in Egypt. Would that the author had "come clean" earlier in his belles lettres - this recent work would have been more credible.
Rating:
Summary: One of the more disarming memoirs of recent times
Review: Edward W. Said's "Out of Place" is one of the most moving books I've ever read. The great British TV dramatist Dennis Potter said that autobiography is the most fraudulent of literary modes; he just couldn't believe that people wouldn't lie about themselves. Potter himself told a lot of embarrassing truths about himself in fictional form; Said's book is a noble reminder that some people still believe that the facts are not only worth telling but can be told. The farcical charge that this book is a "quickie" written to pre-empt an article about Said's alleged coverup of his personal history can be easily dismissed. The article came out in "Commentary", a magazine that has never ceased to encourage Israel to become the United States' hired gun in the Middle East, thereby doing a lot to destroy Israel in the process. (Fortunately, the Israeli press are less corruptible than their American counterparts, and have never ceased to treat Said as someone whose opinion was worth listening to). And anyway, the sheer literary quality of the book belies any idea that it was dashed off in a hurry. Said hasn't spent decades teaching literature without any sense of how to write well. He brings to life a world that is literally lost - that of pre-1948 Palestine and pre-Nasser Cairo. He describes his father's terrifying inability to take his own son seriously, while still paying tribute to the man's extraordinary genius at business. His descriptions of his relationship with his mother rival Proust. His sharp analysis of his own education is generous but never sentimental. For a book written in the shadow of its author's impending death, this is an amazingly revealing portrait of the critic as a young man. Said's intelligence, his sympathy, his vividly felt pain at what happened to the world that he grew up in, puts his mindless critics to shame. He is still working; still reminding us about the value of secular culture against religious fanaticism, still reinterpreting the classics of Western culture for a world that seems to grow smaller, not bigger, every day. He will be sorely missed, but this small book will serve with the rest of his work as a memento to the difficulty of knowing what is true and what is merely easy to get along with.
Rating:
Summary: Painful, almost overwheming,magnificent
Review: Edward. W. said is so many things, cultural crtic, spokesman and crtiic of Palestinian rule and rulers,anti war activist,celebrated friend of the left,professor and, above all a good man. The memoirs then, come as a bit of a shock. mr. said has always been displaced,always the third man in a two man act.Palestinan chrstian not moslem,scholar he has always been or felt different,left out. his parents though loving and attentive,come off as suffocating and,as a parent[and child] were painful to read and identify with, interestingly , for me, then was the fact that the mr saids memoirs could have been written by anyone,or at least the feelings and expierences are so universal,though few could write as well or affecting as mr said.Having read much of mr saids writings, i can say that this is an excellent addition to the canon,though certainly different then anything else.
Rating:
Summary: The classic autobiography.
Review: Having shared some of his Palestinian-Jerusalem experiences,I found Said`s story compelling.It chronicles the daily life of the educated class of Palestinians in the pre 1948 era with great accuracy.It depicts a deserving level of sophistication of the non Jewish Palestinians, long denied by the media.He writes lyrically,and reveals his inner self all the way to a triumphant conquest of his cancer.
Rating: 
Summary: Somehow Boring
Review: I am not a fan of Said, nor did I read his political writings, I am more into memoirs and this one was boring especialy the first 97 pages, the rest of the book (198 pages) were more interesting. Said's parents are more of a typical old fashioned arabic parents, I believe each of us arabs experience a lot of what he went through. Writing the memoir must have helped him during his illness. I wish him good luck.
Rating:
Summary: Convincing and outstanding!
Review: I found the book extraordinary! I could not stop reading it from the first page to the last. Someone recommended it to me, and I boroughed a copy. After reading it, I purchased the book because I want to have it my library. Thanks to it, I bacame more sensitive to the issue of Palestine. It is written with such a talent, such vulnerability and sensitivity, that I was moved and held my breath in many places. I found the author so interesting as a person that I purchased his other books. They are all very interesting, and they inspire me to want to devote my time for a better understanding of the Palestinian issue. Before reading "Out of Place", I was able to attend a lecture by the author at Rice University in Houston, Texas. This opportunity presented itself while my husband was on a contract assignment with Exxon(We normally reside in Delaware). We both went to listen to Edward Said. It was so crowded, I could not help but wish such attendance for every author! People were standing in the halls and watching him on the closed circuit TV. His presentation of the Jewish-Arab issue was conducted with good manners, eloquence and lack of any hatred. It is a good lesson for everyone! - Lesson of discipline, talent, articulation, observation and uniqueness in being objective. I am a great admirer of Edward Said. I am not Jewish, nor am I Arab. I admire him as a person of wonderful virtues. The book "Out of Place" is an autobiography. This is a literary form, which unlike other forms, shows the "ego" of the author. His "ego" is delicate and fascinating.
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