"Kurdistan In the Shadow offers a collidoscopic view of the history of the Kurds.... In the midst of a shortage of decent sources about Kurdistan, this book is a sort of miracle.... [Meiselas] gives the Kurds...an image of their own history.... This is a book that every Turk, Arab, and Iranian should read."
Michiel Hegener
Vrij Nederland (Dutch weekly magazine), April 18, 1998
"Meiselas's [Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History]...attempts to recover what generations of governments have tried to destroy.... The distinctive form of the book indicates a significant shift from Meiselas's usual role of photographer to that of an anthropologist or cultural historian.... The unusual form of her dedicated efforts not only represents a paradigm for a new kind of photographic book, but also poignantly demonstrates how the stories we tell and the images we make produce, rather than reflect, our sense of identity and understanding of what constitutes history.
Debra Singer, Aperture Magazine, Volume 151, Spring 1998
"This massive album treats and exemplifies how history is made, how technologies of representation such as photography and print affect both events and their recall."
Tom LeClair, The Nation, March 23, 1998
"Meiselas has created [an] in-depth documentary of the Kurds' struggle for survival and independence over the past 125 years.... The body of each of the six chapters consists of primary source information from oral histories, diaries, letters, newspapers, memoirs, British and American government documents, and telegraphs, all juxtaposed with remarkable photographs.... Recommended for specialized Middle East collections and larger public libraries."
Ruth K. Boocke, Library Journal, February 15, 1998
"It is a superb book and enriching book: the family album of a forsaken people, the archive of a nation that has not been permitted to exist. It speaks movingly to the fate of all marginal peoples.... It is an album...filled with nobility and brutality, passion and terror."
Karl E. Meyer,The New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1998
"Meiselas has, with infinite labor and tenderness, composed a collage, framed a composition...and, by means of a deft balance between text and camera, brought off a thing of beauty as well of instruction.... This book is everything that scholarship and journalism and humanism ought to aspire to be."
Christopher Hitchens, Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 7, 1997
