Rating: 
Summary: Hope and misery; despair and love
Review: The Emma in question is a want-to-be aid worker who got caught up in the feuds of Sudan, marrying the warlord leader of one of the multiple factions in Sudan's wars. It is an interesting story in itself but it is only part of Scroggins' book, which explores the Sudan and its fractious history, building some kind of explanation of how Sudan got itself into the mess it is in today. She also explores the influence of Western humanitarian aid, questioning the motives of those involved. The conclusions reached are bleak and depressing, yet sadly realistic. There is a lot of detail in the book - tribes involved, their interwoven politics, the personalities of those involved and their backgrounds. What could have been a very dry read is made fascinating by Scroggins - she never takes anything or anyone at face values, exploring the story behind the story. Anyone who thinks they understand what the Horn of Africa needs should read this book before saying anything. It may not be the full story, but it makes many valid and well thought out points.
Rating: 
Summary: An unrealized paradox...
Review: The irony of this book, subtitled "An Aid Worker, A Warlord, Radical Islam, and the Politics of Oil - A True Story of Love and Death in Sudan," is that by the end of it, the book's subject, Emma McCune, is barely passable as an "Aid Worker," radical Islam is not portrayed as radical at all, and that the "Politics of Oil" are fairly irrelevant with regard to the infighting amongst the southern Sudanese SPLA, which is the true subject of Scroggins' work. The author,like most holier-than-thou international types, eventually comes around to pinpoint the true enemy - the West, and more precisely, the U.S. She constantly and pathetically brings up Chevron so as to implicate the company in the ongoing fighting between North and South, only grudingly mentioning that Chevron let their mining prospects lay dormant during the fighting, and eventually cut their losses, selling their interests (at a great loss) to Canadian companies with ties to the North. She is nothing less than mocking in tone towards U.S. humanitarian intervention in Somalia, ["I lay on my bed, listening to the sinister buzz of the U.S. helicopters swooping over the city..."], and is so morally neutral with regard to al-Qaeda tactics (quoting Osama bin-Laden numerous times in the latter chapters), that she sounds more like a reporter for al-Jazeera than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This would have been a decent book had it not been for the out-of-context moralizing at the beginning and end which Scroggins interjects. Emma's War is filled with stories of the political ineptitude of do-gooder aid workers who become unwitting pawns amongst the various warlords, mock-liberation armies who steal UN and UNICEF goods, Sudanese who fight each other based on the sayings of modern-day prophets, and factions who starve their charges in order to gain Western pity (and food, and arms). However, after portraying this pitiful situation (and the immense mess apolitical aid workers had contributed toward making it), and clearly demonstrating that solutions to the situations are likely to come from within anytime soon, Scroggins finds herself in a catch-22: she scorns interventionism as imperialist and colonialist but skewers the West for not doing enough (sarcastically remarking that, "Apparently the New World Order was desirable only if it could be achieved without cost to American lives". ) Scroggins apparently lacks the common sense to realize that you can't have it both ways.
Rating:
Summary: Sad but Compelling
Review: This is a must-read book! Deborah Scroggins does a fabulous job over covering the long-running civil war in Sudan. Rather than being simply a history book, she weaves in the human story of Emma McCune, a British aid worker who leaves neutrality behind to marry a southern Sudanese warlord. Emma is both an admired and reproachable character. She moves to Africa, sacrificing the comforts of the West, to start schools, which she hopes will prevent children from being turned into soldiers. But, at some point, her romantic vision of Africa, schoolgirl ideals of love overcoming all, and delusions about being a bridge between khawajas, or whites, and Africans drives her into the perilous arms of Riek Machar. Riek, at first a "good guy," eventually turns on southern Sudanese, becoming responsible for thousands of deaths -either from starvation or bullets. Deborah does a great job at exploring the idea that despite good intentions, Western aid may not be what Africa needs. She points out that most workers don't understand the history, the culture or the politics of the nation. Without that understanding, seemingly innocent actions produced deadly consequences. Deborah gathered her information from personal interviews with key players, as well as visits to Sudan. This well-written, well-researched book illustrates the suffering of the Sudanese people. I finished it feeling deeply sad about the starvation and disease that has claimed nearly two million Sudanese lives. The war raged over religion (Islam vs. Christianity vs. Secularlism), oil and tribal differnces. It could have been prevented. This book also helped me understand the connections between Africa and the Middle East. Afterall, Sudan was the country where Osama bin Laden lived before moving to Afghanistan. With the global war on terrorism and President Bush's focus on Africa, this book is timely and informative.
Rating:
Summary: Sad but Compelling
Review: This is a must-read book! Deborah Scroggins does a fabulous job over covering the long-running civil war in Sudan. Rather than being simply a history book, she weaves in the human story of Emma McCune, a British aid worker who leaves neutrality behind to marry a southern Sudanese warlord. Emma is both an admired and reproachable character. She moves to Africa, sacrificing the comforts of the West, to start schools, which she hopes will prevent children from being turned into soldiers. But, at some point, her romantic vision of Africa, schoolgirl ideals of love overcoming all, and delusions about being a bridge between khawajas, or whites, and Africans drives her into the perilous arms of Riek Machar. Riek, at first a "good guy," eventually turns on southern Sudanese, becoming responsible for thousands of deaths -either from starvation or bullets. Deborah does a great job at exploring the idea that despite good intentions, Western aid may not be what Africa needs. She points out that most workers don't understand the history, the culture or the politics of the nation. Without that understanding, seemingly innocent actions produced deadly consequences. Deborah gathered her information from personal interviews with key players, as well as visits to Sudan. This well-written, well-researched book illustrates the suffering of the Sudanese people. I finished it feeling deeply sad about the starvation and disease that has claimed nearly two million Sudanese lives. The war raged over religion (Islam vs. Christianity vs. Secularlism), oil and tribal differnces. It could have been prevented. This book also helped me understand the connections between Africa and the Middle East. Afterall, Sudan was the country where Osama bin Laden lived before moving to Afghanistan. With the global war on terrorism and President Bush's focus on Africa, this book is timely and informative.
Rating:
Summary: Love and aid - where nothing is as simple as it seems
Review: This is a wonderful book. It takes two of the most tricky subjects around, wild romantic love and the Western instinct to "aid" the stricken, and renders them in all their rich contradictions and complexity. By focusing on the short life of Emma McCune, Ms Scroggins gains a narrative structure on which she can hang many coats. She is revealing in her insights into both the nobility and folly of the "aid" industry. She evokes the strained English gentility in which Emma was raised, and the louche milieu of the Nairobi whites where she later became a star, beautiful, passionate and promiscuous. Over each of those options, she preferred life in the swamps and savannahs of southern Sudan - "not a beautiful country," as she told an interviewer, but a place where the "people are so charming." Her passion for the velvet-smooth warlord Riek Machar is her triumph and her undoing, and arguably contributes to the needless death of thousands of people. Strung along her narrative, Ms Scroggins writes the most accessible account of the dread realities of Sudan's civil war yet. It is an awful, awesome, compelling place, riven with famine, religious slaughter, slavery, oil, and treachery at every turn. And yet it is not - finally - a pessimistic account. Another reader complained that Scroggins spent too much time recounting her hotel rooms and conversations with taxi drivers. I don't recall a single taxi driver mentioned. The few first-person references all seemed relevant and useful to me. This is so well written, so smoothly accommodating of a love story, frontline journalism, and dark history - and so honest about the confusions that are inevitable in this mix that it should be required reading for anyone drawn to aid work, Africa, or to rampant, improbable love.
Rating:
Summary: Love and aid - where nothing is as simple as it seems
Review: This is a wonderful book. It takes two of the most tricky subjects around, wild romantic love and the Western instinct to "aid" the stricken, and renders them in all their rich contradictions and complexity. By focusing on the short life of Emma McCune, Ms Scroggins gains a narrative structure on which she can hang many coats. She is revealing in her insights into both the nobility and folly of the "aid" industry. She evokes the strained English gentility in which Emma was raised, and the louche milieu of the Nairobi whites where she later became a star, beautiful, passionate and promiscuous. Over each of those options, she preferred life in the swamps and savannahs of southern Sudan - "not a beautiful country," as she told an interviewer, but a place where the "people are so charming." Her passion for the velvet-smooth warlord Riek Machar is her triumph and her undoing, and arguably contributes to the needless death of thousands of people. Strung along her narrative, Ms Scroggins writes the most accessible account of the dread realities of Sudan's civil war yet. It is an awful, awesome, compelling place, riven with famine, religious slaughter, slavery, oil, and treachery at every turn. And yet it is not - finally - a pessimistic account. Another reader complained that Scroggins spent too much time recounting her hotel rooms and conversations with taxi drivers. I don't recall a single taxi driver mentioned. The few first-person references all seemed relevant and useful to me. This is so well written, so smoothly accommodating of a love story, frontline journalism, and dark history - and so honest about the confusions that are inevitable in this mix that it should be required reading for anyone drawn to aid work, Africa, or to rampant, improbable love.
Rating:
Summary: What happened to the book by McCune's own mother?
Review: This is an excellent read, I believe it is going to be made into a film starring Nicole Kidman. I read an equally brilliant book about Emma McCune written by her own mother called 'til the sun grows cold'. It was moving and well written. I read it ages ago and it disappeared from book shops. Why wasn't it made the same fuss over as this book 'Emma's War'? I am wondering if Mrs McCune is upset about a journalist making money and fame out of her daughter's death, I think i would like to know what happened to Emma's own family and what they think.
Rating:
Summary: Emma of Sudan
Review: This is an extraordinary book about two women told against the history of the Sudan Civil War, the longest lasting in African history. The first women is EMMA McCune, a beautiful displaced sole who discovers she has the "sole of Sudan" and desires to help as an aid worker. The second woman is the author Deborah Scroggins who interweaves her own memoirs as a journalist covering the war into a complex and detailed narrative. And finally this is a great overview to the whole of Sudan history going back to the death of Chinese Gordon in Khartoum. Emma eventually leaves aid work, marries an already married warlord who we discover is in collusion with the Islamic government he declares his enemy. (Did Emma know?) The whole book is like a house of mirrors demonstrating that aid is always political and in many cases resented and ineffective. (What can the west do for the continent?) Famine we learn is also often used as a political weapon and may in the end be all about "the oil" and/or personal power. To a small degree Paul Theroux covers some of these same topics in his splendid travel book on Africa, "Dark Star". But if you want to understand the horn of Africa, as told by someone who experienced it, and is also an unusually good writer with a marvelous adventure story thrown in then move this book up on your stack of reading material. I also recommend it to anyone interested in Osama bin Laden, and a view of one root of Islamic fundamentalism took hold and how this may be part of the "blow back" we are experiencing. This is just an excellent book. What is it about the English that they are drawn to such places? People like Richard Burton, Gordon of Khartoum, Lawrence and now Emma. (I understand there are plans to make the book into a movie with Nicole Kidman playing Emma.)
Rating:
Summary: For anyone interested in Africa or development work
Review: This is really an outstanding book on the experience of development work, and the history and politics of South Sudan. The book reads like a novel. My wife and I both finished it in just a few days- it was a 'hard to put down' evening book.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating background to tday's news
Review: This is the book I will give to everyone for a gift this year. It tells an important story about US foreign policy, draws the reader into the little known world of the Sudan, and reads beautifully.
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