American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent
The explosive New York Times bestselling memoir of a Muslim American FBI agent fighting terror from the inside. A longtime undercover agent, Tamer Elnoury joined an elite counterterrorism unit after September 11, 2001. Its express purpose was to gain the trust of terrorists whose goals were to take out as many Americans in as public and devastating a way as possible. It was a furious race against the clock for Elnoury and his unit to stop them before they could implement their plans. Yet the techniques were as old as time: listen, record, and prove terrorist intent. It's no secret that federal agencies have waged a broad, global war against terror, through and after the war in Afghanistan. But for the first time, in this memoir, an active Muslim American federal agent reveals his experience infiltrating and bringing down a terror cell in North America. Due to his ongoing work for the FBI, Elnoury writes under a pseudonym. An Arabic-speaking Muslim American, a patriot, a hero: To many Americans, it will be a revelation that he and his team even existed, let alone the vital and dangerous work they have done keeping all Americans safe.
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Review
It will be a short review as the book has plenty of reviews already so there is not much for me to add. I'll just try to give my opinion on things instead of going into story details.
This is for sure a great book. It's fun, engaging, entertaining, very addictive and informative. It's very much a recommended read if you like this sort of stuff. I'm tired of reading fiction just for fun and instead seek out real stories that are about some mission. This will make me learn about real life while still giving me the feeling of thrill. This is such a book. The person behind it is clearly a writer. Everything here is just great writing so he and his ghostwriter did a good job here.
For the audiobook version it was irritating that the narrator still said every single one of the "he said" pinpoints. Even though the reading accents made this completely unnecessary. It's a small thing but it grows really stale really fast and it was a significant negative for several chapters.
Another negative thing was the negativity. The beginning is amazing. Even though I think the war on drugs is unwinnable and silly it was still amazing to hear about his undercover work as a cop. It was fast, action-packed and exciting. Unfortunately the main plotline about the Muslim terrorists and him as an FBI agent wasn't nearly as good. It's still good stuff but after a while it got really negative and at times even depressing. Once they start talking about a new terrorist plot in New York I just wanted their story to be over with. Luckily the book ended soon afterwards with the second most exciting part of the book, the trial. It's just that before the ending they got to speak about holy war in every single interaction with Tamer. And it was all planning the attack and true Quran stuff. Just whiny stuff and then eating out while FBI was paying for it all. The only thing they had going for them was FBI giving them an endless supply of travels and food. Without that they wouldn't be able to do anything. And they for sure seemed to enjoy the excitement more than any potential attack. They just wanted to be friends and feel important.
This is for sure a recommended book. I just could not stop listening to it. It's so damn exciting. Too bad I don't have anything like it on hand. I want to read 10 more books like it right away! But it's also a book about super losers with few friends who dream about relevance without having any clear terrorist plans. They are bad at life and are negative people. It's people you don't want to hang out with and they don't even have any charisma to them. In this book you hang out with them for a long time and it's fine at the start where the friendship is growing but then grows stale and negative once you understand that there is no depth at all to their lives. It's not macabre or overdone. It just becomes a book that really misses some more personal connection stories at the end. We for example don't hear about a single romantic partner story. That really could have grounded the story and made it more personal. Instead it feels like all Tamer's friends are fleeting. Just there for a moment.
At any rate his job sounds like the most interesting thing in the world and like work that really does make a difference even though in this case they just caught losers who didn't actually kill or harm anyone but just planned stuff for an eternity.
Go read the book. You won't regret it. And you'll for sure want to read more in this genre. Maybe even about some terrorists who actually had weapons or maybe even had a violent history. It's also nice to learn about about the different versions of Islam and how they fight each other intellectually. For sure illustrates that not all Islam is evil or violent.
It will be a short review as the book has plenty of reviews already so there is not much for me to add. I'll just try to give my opinion on things instead of going into story details.
This is for sure a great book. It's fun, engaging, entertaining, very addictive and informative. It's very much a recommended read if you like this sort of stuff. I'm tired of reading fiction just for fun and instead seek out real stories that are about some mission. This will make me learn about real life while still giving me the feeling of thrill. This is such a book. The person behind it is clearly a writer. Everything here is just great writing so he and his ghostwriter did a good job here.
For the audiobook version it was irritating that the narrator still said every single one of the "he said" pinpoints. Even though the reading accents made this completely unnecessary. It's a small thing but it grows really stale really fast and it was a significant negative for several chapters.
Another negative thing was the negativity. The beginning is amazing. Even though I think the war on drugs is unwinnable and silly it was still amazing to hear about his undercover work as a cop. It was fast, action-packed and exciting. Unfortunately the main plotline about the Muslim terrorists and him as an FBI agent wasn't nearly as good. It's still good stuff but after a while it got really negative and at times even depressing. Once they start talking about a new terrorist plot in New York I just wanted their story to be over with. Luckily the book ended soon afterwards with the second most exciting part of the book, the trial. It's just that before the ending they got to speak about holy war in every single interaction with Tamer. And it was all planning the attack and true Quran stuff. Just whiny stuff and then eating out while FBI was paying for it all. The only thing they had going for them was FBI giving them an endless supply of travels and food. Without that they wouldn't be able to do anything. And they for sure seemed to enjoy the excitement more than any potential attack. They just wanted to be friends and feel important.
This is for sure a recommended book. I just could not stop listening to it. It's so damn exciting. Too bad I don't have anything like it on hand. I want to read 10 more books like it right away! But it's also a book about super losers with few friends who dream about relevance without having any clear terrorist plans. They are bad at life and are negative people. It's people you don't want to hang out with and they don't even have any charisma to them. In this book you hang out with them for a long time and it's fine at the start where the friendship is growing but then grows stale and negative once you understand that there is no depth at all to their lives. It's not macabre or overdone. It just becomes a book that really misses some more personal connection stories at the end. We for example don't hear about a single romantic partner story. That really could have grounded the story and made it more personal. Instead it feels like all Tamer's friends are fleeting. Just there for a moment.
At any rate his job sounds like the most interesting thing in the world and like work that really does make a difference even though in this case they just caught losers who didn't actually kill or harm anyone but just planned stuff for an eternity.
Go read the book. You won't regret it. And you'll for sure want to read more in this genre. Maybe even about some terrorists who actually had weapons or maybe even had a violent history. It's also nice to learn about about the different versions of Islam and how they fight each other intellectually. For sure illustrates that not all Islam is evil or violent.
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