Showing titles in Middle East

In 2022, in response to the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody after being arrested for not wearing her hijab, thousands of Iranians - mostly women - took to the streets in protest. Fatemeh Jamalpour had just returned to the country after working...

1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder 11 Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror.

This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history. 

For a period of seven years, Wilfred Thesiger canoed through the marshes at the confluence of Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, living among the native Madan tribes and their islands made of reeds. Now extinct, their ancient way of life is speculated to have existed for 5,000 years, going back to the days of ancient Sumer, and possessed a unique culture found nowhere else in the Middle East. Thesiger documents the tribes' conflicts, traditions, cuisine, relationships, justice systems, and art, and reveals how they built their unique water-borne society

A legendary civilization vanished under the Fertile Crescent and escaped a fate worse than death until Sumerologists questioned widely accepted truths. The Sumerians reemerged onto the extraordinary timeline of human history. Their tales of kings and gods, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, and their fearless trade in distant lands, during the remarkable Bronze Age, centered in the world’s first city-states that chronicled ancient rivalries and their enduring impact.

How the Mongol invasions of the Near East reshaped the balance of world power in the Middle Ages. For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the...

In this updated version of the classic of popular Egyptology, Barbara Mertz combines her doctorate in Egyptology at the famed Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago with a life-long enthusiasm for ancient Egypt. Her love of the subject is contagious and makes her the perfect guide to ancient Egypt for the student, the layman, and those who plan to visit or have visited the Nile Valley.

The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there’s a...

For 2,500 years, the Celts have continued to fascinate those who have come into contact with them, yet their origins have remained a mystery and even today are the subject of heated debate among historians and archaeologists. Barry Cunliffe's classic study of the ancient Celtic world was first published in 1997. Since then, huge advances have taken place in our knowledge: new finds, new ways of using DNA records to understand Celtic origins, new ideas about the proto-urban nature of early chieftains' strongholds. All these developments are part of this fully updated edition.

It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.

It is taken for granted, even among many Washington policymakers, that Islam is a fundamentally peaceful religion and that Islamic jihad terrorism is something relatively new, a product of the economic and political ferment of the 20th century. But in The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, Islamic scholar Robert Spencer proves definitively that Islamic terror is as old as Islam itself, as old as Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, who said “I have been made victorious through terror.”

In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing their beloved Iraq to the new state of Israel. Today the once flourishing Jewish community of Iraq, at one time numbering over 130,000 and tracing its history back 2,600 years, has all but vanished.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world's most intractable dispute. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free Q&A format, Dov Waxman provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides.

In the past five years, Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014) have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions. On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological.

A portrait in her own words of the female Lawrence of Arabia, the subject of the PBS documentary Letters from Baghdad, voiced by Tilda Swinton, and the major motion picture Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson and directed by Werner Herzog...

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of...

A major work by one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century, The Question of Palestine was the first book to narrate the modern Palestinian experience in English. Edward Said’s project to ‘bring Palestine into history’ was unquestionably a success – there is no longer a question of whether Palestine had a history before colonization – and yet Palestinian self-determination is as distant as ever.

Step into the ancient world and journey through the annals of history to explore the mighty Assyrian Empire in this captivating narrative. "The Assyrian Empire" offers a comprehensive account of one of the most formidable civilizations of the ancient Near East.

Did a highly advanced civilization exist in prehistory? Is the Giza Pyramid a remnant of their technology? Then, what was the power source that fueled such a civilization? The technology of harmonic resonance, claims renowned master craftsman and engineer Christopher Dunn. In a brilliant piece...

The Bible is the world's best-known text. Yet, it is a book that never was - its original form does not exist and likely never did. What we have is the inheritance of generation after generation of Christians who have sought to hear God speak. Available in over 3,000 languages and taking innumerable forms, each version is a revelation, evolving as a reflection of its own culture and moment.

In "Ancient Egypt" journey back in time to one of the most fascinating civilizations in history. This concise yet comprehensive book takes you on a captivating exploration of the land of the pharaohs, offering a clear and insightful overview of ancient Egyptian culture, society, and achievements. Delve into the mystique of the pyramids, marvel at the grandeur of the temples, and unravel the secrets of the hieroglyphs. Discover the daily life of ordinary Egyptians, their beliefs in the afterlife, and the powerful rulers who shaped Egypt's destiny.

When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea in the west all the way to modern-day India in the east. In an unusual compromise, his two heirs - a mentally damaged half brother, Philip III, and an infant son, Alexander IV, born after his death - were jointly granted the kingship. But six of Alexander's Macedonian generals, spurred by their own thirst for power and the legend that Alexander bequeathed his rule "to the strongest," fought to gain supremacy.  

Brought to you by Penguin. The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein...

In Islam, Israel and the West, Danny Burmawi makes sure you get Islam right. Writing as a former Muslim who left the Middle East for freedom in the West, Burmawi exposes what Islam truly is: not simply a private religion, but a political-theological system with global ambitions.

Brought to you by Penguin. Even as the great siege began it was understood by both sides to be an epic – a potentially decisive encounter between an uneasy assortment of soldiers, native Maltese, adventurers and Knights Hospitaller on a strategically crucial but near waterless island and a...

Despite the turmoil of Arab nationalism and fundamentalism, Middle Eastern wars, and oil crises, the history of the Arab world has been little known and poorly understood in the West. One reason may be that, for more than half a century, there has been no up-to-date single volume work that chronicles the story of Arab civilization - until now.

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the United States media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of...

Do you know that Egyptians had over 2000 gods and goddesses? To understand how the ancient Egyptians saw the world around them, we begin our journey by exploring their beliefs of how the world and man came to be. Get this audiobook and discover the fascinating world of Egyptian Mythology today!

Acclaimed travel writer Rick Antonson sets his adventurous compass on Mount Ararat, exploring the region's long history, religious mysteries, and complex politics. Mount Ararat is the most fabled mountain in the world. For millennia, this massif in eastern Turkey has been rumored as the resting place of Noah's Ark following the Great Flood. But it also plays a significant role in the longstanding conflict between Turkey and Armenia.

You’ve seen the pyramids. You’ve heard of Anubis and mummies. But do you know the epic myths that gave them meaning? Whether you’re new to mythology or curious to go deeper, this guide invites you into a rich, symbolic world shaped by creation, death, resurrection, and cosmic order, a world that influenced over three thousand years of civilization.