A review by lrmsreads
The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker

3.0

I'll be honest, I read Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (The Taliban Shuffle): Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker because I want to watch the movie Tina Fey starred in. After reading it, I will be intrigued to see how they turned it into a story cohesive enough to be a movie. As a foreign correspondent, Barker has a unique inside look into what was going on in the region and she clearly became very knowledgable about the politics of the region. I appreciated learning about how she made connections and her feelings towards her safety in the region, she clearly felt far more secure than any news agency would lead you to believe the area was. But, I still feel like I was missing a lot of the story, I think maybe for this to all come together in my head, I needed a little more of the substance of the stories she worked on in addition to the behind the scenes info she had to offer. Furthermore, there were moments when Barker seemed quite flippant about the whole situation including when she was punching men for pinching her in crowds, getting angry about quality of service at hotels when clearly she shouldn't be expecting anything remotely close to what you would receive in the U.S., and arguing with her driver/fixer about his religious figureheads. It was a little off putting because it felt at times either dangerous and/or disrespectful to the culture she had immersed herself in.