Elvis Is Titanic

the long version

In the spring of 2005, 26-year-old Ian Klaus arrived at Salahaddin University in Arbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan. This is the poignant, funny, and eye-opening story of the semester he spent there teaching U.S. history and English in the thick of the war for hearts and minds. Inspired by the volunteerism of so many young Americans after 9/11, Klaus exchanges the abstraction of duty for an intimate involvement with individual lives. Among the Kurds, a perennially oppressed but seemingly indomitable people, he encounters both openhearted welcome and resentful suspicion--and soon learns firsthand how far even a trusted stranger can venture in this society. With assignments ranging from Elvis to Ellington, from baseball to Tocqueville, Klaus strives to illuminate the American way for charges initially far more attuned to our pop culture than our national ideals--and begins his own reexamination of truths we hold to be self-evident.--From publisher description.