Though the Kurds played a major military and tactical role in the United States’ recent war with Iraq, most of us know little about this fiercely independent, long-marginalized people. Now acclaimed journalist Christiane Bird, who riveted readers with her tour of Islamic Iran in Neither East Nor West, travels through this volatile part of the world to tell the Kurds’ story, using personal observations and in-depth research to illuminate an astonishing history and vibrant culture.

For the twenty-five to thirty million Kurds, Kurdistan is both an actual and a mythical place: an isolated, largely mountainous homeland that has historically offered sanctuary from the treacherous outside world and yet does not exist on modern maps. Parceled out among the four nation-states of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran after World War I, Kurdistan is a divided land with a tragic history, where the indomitable Kurds both celebrate their ancient culture and fight to control their own destiny. Occupying some of the Middle East’s most strategic and richest terrain, the Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the region and the largest ethnic group in the world without a state to call their own.

Whether dancing at a Kurdish wedding in Iran, bearing witness to the destroyed Kurdish countryside in southeast Turkey, having lunch with a powerful exiled agha in Syria, or visiting the sites of Saddam Hussein’s horrific chemical attacks in Iraq, the intrepid, insightful Bird sheds light on a violently stunning world seen by few Westerners. Part mesmerizing travelogue, part action-packed history, part reportage, and part cultural study, this critical book offers timely insight into an unknown but increasingly influential part of the world. Bird paints a moving and unforgettable portrait of a people uneasily poised between a stubborn past and an impatient future.

Christiane Bird was born in New York City. She grew up primarily in Storrs, Connecticut, but spent three years of early childhood in Tabriz, Iran, where her father worked as a medical doctor. She has worked as a magazine editor and as a travel writer for the New York Daily News, and has freelanced for many other publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, and the Chicago Tribune. She holds a BA in literature from Yale University and a master's degree in American Studies from Columbia University.

Bird is the author of five books, all of which involved extensive travel and immersion in other cultures, ranging from the music world to the Middle East. She is a co-author of Below the Line: Living Poor in America, a photography book by Eugene Richards, and the author of two critically acclaimed guidebooks: The Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S. and the New York State Handbook. The San Francisco Examiner called Bird's jazz guide "the best work of its kind," and the New York Public Library named her New York guide one of the 25 outstanding reference books of 1997. In Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran, Bird revisited the country she remembered from early childhood; barnesandnoble.com named the book one of the 10 best books of 2001 and the best travel book of 2001. It was while in Iran that Bird conceived of her latest book, A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan, which is based on her travels through the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria in 2002, shortly before the Iraq war.

Bird lives in New York City with her partner Jerry Brown, their daughter Simone, and two cats.