I looked forward to reading and reviewing this book but due to health reasons it has taken me a while to do so. However, I have finally managed to achieve this so now for the review.

I’m going to start with the positives of the book first. Amor gives us a glimpse into his country, it’s politics, and religion from a very personal point of view. He also tried to show his own self-development. He also indicated that he tried to not only learn English but to also learn about American so as to assimilate into its culture. Family also featured strongly in his book and the importance family held for him. Amor’s tenacity and commitment to where he felt lead is to be commended. Unfortunately though that’s where the positives ended for me.

The negatives came from the moment that I opened the book. The print I found was really small and there was a lot of it per page. Initially I tried to look past this but after sometime I found that the print was really hurting my eyes. I did feel that there were times when the story was unnecessarily verbose in its detail of his life and growth into the man that he became. This really slowed down the pace of the book unfortunately. Another problem I encountered was that the text of the main book was written in first person whilst with the pictures the text underneath each photo was written in third person. This change in person really jarred and made reading the book awkward. This book was let down by the editing I think.This book was let down by the editing I think. I’m suspicious that this book would be better as a series of motivational talks rather than as a book. It has good bones but it still falls short.

So whilst I would have liked to have given a better review of this book I can’t in all honesty do so. ( )

I requested a review copy of Ben Amor's book, believing that I would be reading a memoir of his early life in Tunisia--a country about which I know very little. I anticipated learning about Tunisian culture and about the American immigrant experience. I understood, as well, that Amor had started a charitable organization dedicated to feeding hungry children, and I was curious to know more about this.

I read one-tenth of The Urban Shepherd before calling it quits. First of all, I found the liberal sprinkling of "think-and-grow-rich" style quotations from supposedly inspirational businessmen very off-putting. I know I'm the wrong audience for exhortations about success and getting rich--along the lines of "Believe in yourself, and commit to your dreams." The writing was of poor quality, confusing at times, and in need of some serious revision and editing. The author needed to get more feedback as to what his (North American) readers might like to know about his life, and he needed to provide specific, vivid details beyond cliche. Creating a book with a professional writer would have been the best approach for Amor to tell his story and get his message across effectively.

I did learn a little about the fairly high childhood mortality rate and the low quality of education for Arab Tunisians prior to Independence in 1956 (when the country was a French colony). For Muslim children who did attend school, six years of education was typical. Few Arab children had much exposure to (and knowledge of) French, which was the ticket to higher education.

Sadly, because the writing was of poor quality and the observations so general and underwhelming (e.g. "gaining knowledge and acquiring a sense of self-awareness are priceless") I had no will to invest further time in the book.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me we a digital copy of the book. I regret that I was not able to complete it. ( )