The Middle Class in the Middle East, and Your Inner Fearful Demons

Oct. 21, 2009 | By Patt Morrison

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Vali Nasr's portfolio as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke -- Holbrooke is the White House's special envoy to Afghanistand and Pakistan -- prevented Nasr from saying too much about developing international matters like a pact for overseeing Iran's handling of its nuclear material. But there was no stopping him on the subject of his new book, ''Forces of Fortune.''

He believes that a thriving market economy can bring much of the Middle East, including his own native Iran, into the world of commerce, and of nations, by creating a stabilizing middle class. His strongest example is Turkey, which is Euro-looking in its economic gaze, but he has hopes for Iran, where a well-educated and techno-literate middle class is frustrated by structural theo-politics and the repressive arm of a regime where citizens have a vote but an appointed cleric sits for life at the top of the political heap.

It's inner turmoil that Harold Kushner's talking about in his book, ''Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World.'' It's the rabbi's twelfth book, and his name may be familiar to you from his seminal ''When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He makes the distinction between fear, which can be a useful survival trait in small doses but can become paralyzing, and the more reasonable concern.

He knows whereof he speaks -- not only as a spiritual adviser, but because he happened to be at Logan Airport in Boston the morning the 9/11 flights took off from there -- and in San Francisco for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. He jokes to his friends, ''Don't follow me around!'' But many of you called about following his advice about how to dial back the fear and feeling of rejection that accompanies loss -- from jobs to family members -- and change.

Next time, renowned historian Taylor Branch is here lugging his massive tapes tome, ''The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President,'' the account of his 79 sessions with President Bill Clinton over the course of that eight-year presidency, and dog behaviorist Cesar Millan.

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