“Swift, intense and forensic. . . . [Tax] brings the habit ‘optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect’ to [A Road Unforeseen]. The journey takes her deep to the history of Middle East and the fate of Kurds [where] now [women] are improvising a new model of living in an enclave that is not an ethnic state but a confederation of half a dozen ethnicities, organizing co-operative economy in an egalitarian borderland called Rojava. Meredith Tax wonders whether they can survive. But she is inspired. And reading her book, you will be, too.”