Crossing the Sea: With Syrians on the Exodus to Europe Hardcover – April 12, 2016

This is a book of reportage, rather than a collection of first-hand narratives. Bauer's subjects are mostly very wealthy Syrians who can pay tens of thousands of dollars to various people smugglers, government officials, and ship captains, many of them thieves, swindlers, or worse. The best of these profiteers are cold-hearted and corrupt; some are actually murderers., torturers, and slave dealers. Many would-be refugees die or are murdered en route; others and sent home or stranded, and must hire a completely new bunch of human traffickers and hope for a better outcome. These tales are heart-rending and horrifying. If this treatment is inflicted on the rich and privileged, we can hardly imagine what ordinary people experience. Of course, few live to complain. "The West", as we would expect, is not simply standing by and doing nothing; it is actively participating in the holocaust in Syria, and preventing victims from escaping.

Totally gripping, sobering but educational, offers key perspective on the movement of refugees in general. And the final chapter is the best explanation I've seen of how the entire Syrian mess and chaos came to be.

An excellent book, Wolfgang Bauer does a great job of depicting the plight and struggles of refugees. - Ty Davis

Very disappointing and highly incredible propaganda account of an intended Mediterranean crossing that failed to complete. Most of it is based on unverified hearsay of a handful of youngsters the author apparently befriended before his eventual incarceration and deportation first to Turkey then home to Germany.Tale includes not one but two incarcerations - one in Alexandria, another in Italy or Austria - with equally mysterious releases. Alexandria prison is strangely quite lax, more like an overcrowded hostel. During the course of surprisingly brief detention, friends and relatives were apparently summoned to provide food, clothes, etc. Huh? Stranger still, author's second arrest this time for smuggling undocumented migrants seemed mysteriously to result in no actual charges. Human trafficking now gets a free pass in Europe?If there is anything to take from this suspicious, probably more than half bogus story it may be this: Few, if any, migrants are refugees in the desperate sense we understand the term. These maritime gamblers are the privileged set with cash and education sufficient to work out which European countries will give them the biggest bang for their migrant buck without asking too many questions. That would be Sweden and Germany. Again, despite the media's affection for portraits of small, exhausted-looking children, it is overwhelmingly healthy mostly young men who take the risk. Of course it is. They are coming not from terrifying refugee camps but from urban apartments in comparatively peaceful and prosperous neighboring countries.The book fails to address in any meaningful way the destabilization of Europe created by a mass influx of incompatible cultures, who are increasingly demonstrating their unwillingness/inability to assimilate. Nor does it touch on the effect such migration must be having on the migrants' home states when these men leave the weakest members of society to fend for themselves. Who will do the hot, weary work of reform if not the young men?The author absurdly places responsibility for civil war in Syria on the more than generous West, convinced - no matter how many times the world tries and fails - that you can, in fact, export good government. No, you can't. It is up to the citizens of each sovereign state to determine the form of govt the people want. it is up to Africans, Syrians, Egyptians and all the others in the heat of civil conflict to do this hard work. This is as it must be.The West must restrict our efforts to protecting the way of life we've been able to establish inevitably with the same hot, weary and often bloody work the migrants/refugees today should be doing.It would be sheer madness to send Western troops to any nation when its own citizens overwhelmingly decline to protect it or fight to reform it.We must be equally careful and determined to avoid the liberal temptation of trying to blend clearly incompatible customs. Remember, the migrants/refugees are not heading to Africa, India, any of the stans or to Russia. No, their clear preference overwhelmingly is to enjoy the fruits of western liberal democracy.As such, the West must make every effort to protect what we've built, protect our long and hard-won investment, which may mean limiting what is offered to migrants/refugees who jump the queue to a temporary, limited rather than permanent full benefits, which locals alone have paid for.Homeless Westerners would not roll up in Saudi Arabia expecting the bounty of the sheik's treasure.

Very easy book to read. Author is a writer for a German magazine. Concise and very to the point. Also riveting. We in the Western World forget how good we have it most of the time. The trials and tribulations of those refugees from the civil war in Syria are almost beyond belief to us. He focuses on a few Syrian men, and to a lesser extent their families, showing how their journey starts and the many roadblocks that exist. Bauer does blame the West and our government for missteps that could have made the mass exodus from Syria a non issue. Most of the book, however, is not in that vein. Most of it is a clear, concise informative account of the horrendous conditions these immigrants go through for their families' futures.

Thought-provoking book

An essential read in today's world. This book helped me see what is happening more clearly and has given me a better perspective. Congratulations to the brave journalist and photographer who opened my eyes.