Tehran, June 12, 2009. Mohsen Abbaspour, an ordinary young man in his twenties—not particularly political, or ambitious, or worldly—casts the first vote of his life in Iran's tenth presidential election. Fed up with rising unemployment and inflation, he backs the reformist party and its candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mohsen believes his vote will count.
It will not. Almost the instant the polls close, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will declare himself president by an overwhelming majority. And as the Western world scrambles to make sense of the brazenly fraudulent election, Mohsen, along with his friends and family and neighbors, will experience a sense of utter desolation, and then something else: an increasingly sharper feeling—the beginning of anger. In a matter of weeks, millions of Iranians will flow into the streets, chanting in protest, "Death to the dictator!" Mohsen Abbaspour will be swept up in an uncontrollable and ultimately devastating chain of events.
Like Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families and Ryszard Kapuscinski's incisive reportage, Death to the Dictator! stuns listeners with its heartbreaking immediacy. Our pseudonymous author was a keen eyewitness in Tehran during the summer of 2009 and beyond. In this brave and true book, we see what we are not supposed to see and learn what we are not supposed to know.
For anyone who has ever pondered what everyday life was like during the time of Jesus comes a lively and illuminating portrait of the nearly unknown world of daily life in first-century Palestine.
An Oxford-educated scholar of the Middle East and a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Hugh Pope lived and worked in two dozen countries throughout the region. Following in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton and Lawrence of Arabia, Hugh Pope's explorations of the people, politics, religion, and culture of Islamic nations shows there is no such thing as a monolithic "Muslim World." His probing and often perilous journeys—at one point he is forced to quote Koranic verse to argue against his being murdered by a top al-Qaeda leader—provide an eye-opening look at diverse societies often misportrayed by superficial reporting and "why they hate us" politics.
With U.S. foreign policy under President Obama aiming to engage more constructively with Muslim nations, this lyrical and often poetic voyage is one of the truly important books of our times.
Through powerful narrative, Tea with Hezbollah will draw all who see the looming threat rising in the Middle East into a completely fresh understanding of those we call our enemies and the teaching that dares us to love them.
From the author of the #1 national bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian and the schools he has established.
Two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state--and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.
From early times the British people have been drawn to the Holy Land through two major influences: the translation of the Bible into English and, later, the imperial need to control the road to India and access to the oil in the Middle East. Under these influences, one cultural and the other political, countless Englishmen—pilgrims, crusaders, missionaries, merchants, explorers, and surveyors—have made their way to the land of the ancient Hebrews.
With the lucidity and vividness that characterizes her work, Barbara Tuchman brings to life the development of these twin motives—the Bible and the sword—in the consciousness of the British people, until they were finally brought together at the end of World War I when Britain's conquest of Palestine from the Turks and the solemn moment of entering Jerusalem were imminent. Requiring a gesture of matching significance, that event evoked the Balfour Declaration of 1917, establishing a British-sponsored national home for the modern survivors of the people of the Old Testament.
In her account, first published in 1956, Ms. Tuchman demonstrates that the seeds of today's troubles in the Middle East were planted long before the first efforts at founding a modern state of Israel.
"Barbara Tuchman is a wise and witty writer, a shrewd observer with a lively command of high drama."—Philadelphia Inquirer
Vali Nasr, the author of the New York Times bestseller The Shia Revival, offers a dissection of the problem the West faces with Iran and reveals how, by building strong ties to the new, pragmatic business class that is emerging in Iran, the West can pull the rug of power out from under the extremist mullahs and forge strong new alliances in the region.
Across the Western alliance, liberal politicians and pundits are calling for renewed diplomatic engagement with Iran, convinced that Tehran will respond to reason and halt its nuclear weapons program. Yet, according to bestselling author and former U.N. ambassador Dore Gold, countries have repeatedly tried diplomatic talks and utterly failed. In The Rise of Nuclear Iran, Gold traces these past failures and explains why diplomacy will continue to backfire, no matter who is president or which party is in power.
Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy. For more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. Streams of wealth flowed into Constantinople, making possible unprecedented wonders of art and architecture. And the emperors who ruled Byzantium enacted a saga of political intrigue and conquest as astonishing as anything in recorded history. Lost to the West is replete with stories of assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming, ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked battlefields with the blood of slain warriors numbering in the tens of thousands. From the Hardcover edition.
Esteemed professor emeritus F.E. Peters compares the similarities and differences in the dual searches for the historical Jesus and the historical Muhammad. These quests have been the focus of considerable effort since the lifetime of each of these venerated figures. Using the primary tools of historical inquiry and the evidence discovered by both believers and unbelievers in the faiths established by Jesus and Muhammad, Professor Peters provides an insightful look into the results thus far found and the surprising truths uncovered.
Most Americans think of the Taliban and al-Qaeda as a bunch of bearded fanatics fighting an Islamic crusade from caves in Afghanistan. But that doesn't explain their astonishing comeback along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Why is it that eight years after we invaded Afghanistan, the CIA says that these groups are better armed and better funded than ever?
Seeds of Terror will reshape the way you think about America's enemies, revealing them less as ideologues and more as criminals who earn half a billion dollars every year off the opium trade. With the breakneck pace of a thriller, author Gretchen Peters traces their illicit activities from vast poppy fields in southern Afghanistan to heroin labs run by Taliban commanders, from drug convoys armed with Stinger missiles to the money launderers of Karachi and Dubai.
This isn't a fanciful conspiracy theory. Seeds of Terror is based on hundreds of interviews with Taliban fighters, smugglers, and law enforcement and intelligence agents. Their information is matched by intelligence reports shown to the author by frustrated U.S. officials who fear the next 9/11 will be far deadlier than the first—and paid for with drug profits.
Seeds of Terror makes the case that we must cut terrorists off from their drug earnings if we ever hope to beat them. This war isn't about ideology or religion. It's about creating a new economy for Afghanistan—and breaking the cycle of violence and extremism that has gripped the region for decades.
