I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai with co-author Christina Lamb

Our author this month is the young Pakistani woman who was shot, almost fatally, by a Taliban assassin, for advocating publicly for the education of Pakistani youth, especially girls. She was 15 years old. The assassin's bullet entered her left eye as she

sat in a school bus, going home at the end of a school day. She survived the attack. Expert medical attention, first in Pakistan, later in Birmingham, England, saved her life. Now she continues to advocate for education and has founded the Malala Fund to promote and support that goal. In recognition of her courage and her continuing work for the education of youth, in 2014 Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest recipient to be so recognized

In providing a context for her story, Malala treats us to the history of the Swat Valley and of Pakistan. Having given us a vivid sense of daily life in Pashtun culture, she describes in compelling terms the coming of the Taliban to Swat Valley and the terrorist tactics it used to force itself and its values on the Pashtun people of Swat Valley. Malala also gives her readers some taste of the complexity of life in Pakistan in the fight between radical Islam and not-radical Muslims.

Malala's father looms large in her story, and in her telling he entirely deserves it.

He transforms himself from a shy stuttering youth to a prize-winning orator, from a poverty-stricken aspiring teacher to the owner of several schools. He carries on advocating for education for opening the minds of young Pakistanis to ideas and to the wider world-despite years of receiving death threats, in a culture of all too frequent political or religious assassination.

And he nurtures Malala, insisting that she receive an education. She becomes a top student, a prize-winning speaker, and a nationally recognized promoter of education. All this in the face of a Swat Valley dominated by the Taliban. In fact that dominance is so complete that the school Malala attends, her father's, is semi-secret, unmarked on the exterior in any way.

She doesn't discuss the 9/11 attacks directly, which is understandable, since she was just 6 years old when those attacks occurred. But she does deal with the Pakistani complex response to the Navy Seal raid that slew Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad. And she gives us the quite uncomplicated response to the American use of drones in the Swat Valley.

Through it all, she continues courageously to study and to speak. She was going home from her father's school on October 9, 2012, when a young Taliban shooter climbs the tailgate of her truck/school bus and demands "Who is Malala?" In way, this book is her answer.