Kidnapped and Other Dispatches

BBC correspondent Johnston really gets involved in the story in this absorbing collection of reports, originally for broadcast, from Gaza and other Middle East hotspots. In 2007, he was seized in Gaza by an obscure Palestinian militia and held for 114 days by moody guards who subjected him to death threats and occasional violence; he persevered with a determined, positive-thinking regimen and support from an international campaign. It's a tale that Americans who think of Gaza only as an incomprehensible hellhole might expect, except that Johnston embeds his ordeal amid nuanced, sympathetic reporting that makes the region's travails all too understandable. He introduces Palestinians and Israelis hardened in their hatreds of each other, observes families grieving over children caught in the crossfire and takes us to a beach where Gazans get a break from Gaza. Johnston includes dispatches from Afghanistan under Taliban rule, in which he elegizes Kabul's once vibrant university and dodges Taliban beard inspectors. And he reports from Central Asia on Samarkand's architectural splendors and Mongolia's undying nomad culture. These radio pieces are a bit slender and out of date, but they intimately convey the human reality behind the dire headlines. Photos. (May)