Christiane Bird is the author of two travel narratives, two books of narrative nonfiction, and two guidebooks, ranging in subject matter from music to the Middle East to New York City. All her books have received high praise from the critics, in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, and Salon.com.
Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran chronicles Christiane's travels through Iran in late 1998, a time when the country was newly reopened, post–Islamic Revolution, to a trickle of American visitors. A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan describes her travels through the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria in 2002, a year before the United States invaded Iraq. The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West relates a 19th-century story of romance, slavery, and geopolitics set in Oman, Germany, and Zanzibar. Her latest book, A Block in Time: A NYC History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, tells the history of the city through the stories of people who once lived and worked on a single block; each chapter focuses on an individual, some well-known, some not.
Christiane's first guidebook, The Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S., was nominated for the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Her second, New York State (Moon Books), was named one of the 25 Outstanding Reference Books of 1997 by the New York Public Library.
Laura Miller, in Salon, on The Sultan's Shadow
"Popular history at its best. . . Reading The Sultan's Shadow is like absorbing history through your skin."
Noam Chomsky, on A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts
"I cannot recommend too highly this brilliantly evocative portrait of a people."
Chicago Tribune, on Neither East Nor West
"A refreshingly frank and nonjudgmental journey into another world . . . [Bird] is a marvelously inventive writer who sweeps us along on her magic carpet ride."
Bill Hayes, author of Insomniac City, on A Block in Time
"By deftly uncovering layer after layer of the history of just one city block in New York, Christiane Bird has created something altogether new: a kind of literary archaeology, rich with characters, incidents, and stories. . . I loved it."
San Francisco Examiner, on The Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S.
"This is not only 'the best work of its kind'—an inevitable comment—it is the only work of its kind . . . It will remain for years a major contribution to the significant, historical literature of America's basic vernacular music forms."
Christiane's books have been translated into German, Spanish, Hungarian, Kurdish, and Arabic.