It’s unlike any trip you’ve taken to Israel. Or anywhere for that matter—even if you’ve ridden camels through the Sahara or windsurfed on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. 

In Jared Cohen’s latest book, Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East, 26-year-old Cohen takes you where few Americans have ventured. It’s the chance of a lifetime to find out what young people in the Middle East really think about the country in which they live—forget what you see on the news or what you assume based on the actions of their governments.

Imagine hanging out with Hezbollah members—who are your own age—in a Lebanese McDonald’s. Cohen befriends those whom the United States has identified as the enemy and shows us in his thoughtful and provoking book that we have been truly mistaken. 

Putting his own life in danger, Cohen travels all over the Middle East—through Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—to unravel the mysteries and secrecies of the region that has confounded the West. Cohen was given the amazing opportunity to use his Rhodes Scholarship as a launching point to travel through the Middle East to interview political leaders and government officials.

When he finally got his visa just 12 hours before his flight to Iran, Cohen was raring to go. He had been through far more dangerous situations while in Africa during his undergrad years at Stanford (check out his other book, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide), but what he was about to face in Iran was something he had never expected. 

Cohen’s plans had been changed for him the second he stepped off the plane in Tehran. The Iranian government had issued an “escort” to accompany him everywhere. No one would help him get the interviews he sought, and his escort ended up dragging him around Iran in a taxi sightseeing for most of the day. Fed up, Cohen decided he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the interviews to come to him (especially since the chance of actually meeting these officials was slim to none).

Cohen, like a Nancy Drew/James Bond of the 21st century, snuck onto the University of Tehran campus and found his story there. He hadn’t imagined that he would get such a warm welcome from the students he met—especially being an American—but what he found was that most young Iranians love Americans: our culture, fast food, fashion and … our government.  

Cohen became a coveted confidant for Iranian youth, and they couldn’t wait to tell him their side of the story. It was in Iran that Cohen felt most at home—and he used his experience there as a model for his research in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Children of Jihad is a beautiful example of ethnography at its finest—real field work with real people. This is a book that people of all ages should read, if only to reverse the tremendous rumor mill the United States has created about the Middle East, and vice versa.

Enter to win one of five copies of the book here.

Marissa Grey is a JVibe editorial intern. She is a huge fan of Jared Cohen and can't wait until his next book is in the works.