iBooks Top Middle East History Ebooks

Chart of the most popular and best selling Middle East history ebooks at the Apple iBookstore.

Chart list of the top Middle Eastern history ebook ebook best sellers was last updated:

History Ebook Best Sellers

Top Middle East History Ebook Best Sellers

1

Gideon's Spies - Gordon Thomas Cover Art

Gideon's Spies

Gideon's Spies The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas

In the secret world of spies and covert operations, no other intelligence service continues to be as surrounded by myth and mystery as the Mossad. Gordon Thomas reveals that all too often the truth exceeds all the fantasies about the Mossad. Revised and updated for 2015, this new edition includes: - Mossad's secret meeting in 2013 with Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief to plan for Israel to use Saudi to attack Iran should the Geneva discussion fail to be honored by Iran. - The attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor that will be the flight path to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. - Mossad's new cyber-war unit preparing to launch its own pre-emptive strike. - Why Mossad's former director, Meir Dagan, has spoken out against an attack on Iran. - Mossad agents who operate in the "Dark Side" of the internet to track terrorists. - Mossad's drone and its first killing. - Mossad's role in the defense of Israel's Embassy in Cairo during the Arab Spring. - An introduction to Mossad's new director, Tamir Pardo. These and other stunning details combine to give Gideon's Spies the sense of urgency and relevance that is characteristic of truly engrossing nonfiction.

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You Are Worth It - Kyle Carpenter & Don Yaeger Cover Art

You Are Worth It

You Are Worth It Building a Life Worth Fighting For by Kyle Carpenter & Don Yaeger

The youngest living Medal of Honor recipient delivers an unforgettable memoir that "will inspire every reader” (Jim Mattis) NATIONAL BESTSELLER | A Marine Commandant's Reading List selection On November 21, 2010, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter was posted atop a building in violent Helmand Province, Afghanistan, when an enemy grenade skittered toward Kyle and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio. Without hesitation, Kyle chose a path of selfless heroism that few can imagine. He jumped on the grenade, saving Nick but sacrificing his own body.   Kyle Carpenter’s heart flatlined three times while being evacuated off the battlefield in Afghanistan. Yet his spirit was unbroken. Severely wounded from head to toe, Kyle lost his right eye as well as most of his jaw. It would take dozens of surgeries and almost three years in and out of the hospital  to reconstruct his body. From there, he began the process of rebuilding his life. What he has accomplished in the last nine years is extraordinary: he’s come back a stronger, better, wiser person. In 2014, Kyle was awarded the nation’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his “singular act of courage” on that rooftop in Afghanistan, an action which had been reviewed exhaustively by the military. Kyle became the youngest living recipient of the award–and only the second living Marine so honored since Vietnam. Kyle’s remarkable memoir reveals a central truth that will inspire every reader: Life is worth everything we’ve got. It is the story of how one man became a so-called hero who willingly laid down his life for his brother-in-arms—and equally, it is a story of rebirth, of how Kyle battled back from the gravest challenge to forge a life of joyful purpose. You Are Worth It is a memoir about the war in Afghanistan and Kyle’s heroics, and it is also a manual for living. Organized around the credos that have guided Kyle’s life (from “Don’t Hide Your Scars” to “Call Your Mom”), the book encourages us to become our best selves in the time we’ve been given on earth. Above all, it’s about finding purpose, regardless of the hurdles that may block our way. Moving and unforgettable, You Are Worth It is an astonishing memoir from one of our most extraordinary young leaders.

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Perversion of Justice - Julie K. Brown Cover Art

Perversion of Justice

Perversion of Justice The Jeffrey Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown

The New York Times Bestseller “A gripping journalistic procedural… Spotlight meets Erin Brockovich.” —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times “Julie K. Brown's important book offers not just a definitive account of the Epstein case, but a compelling window into her own experiences as a dogged reporter at a regional newspaper, facing off against powerful interests set against her reporting.” —Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Catch and Kill Dauntless journalist Julie K. Brown recounts her uncompromising and risky investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's underage sex trafficking operation, and the explosive reporting for the Miami Herald that finally brought him to justice while exposing the powerful people and broken system that protected him. For many years, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's penchant for teenage girls was an open secret in the high society of Palm Beach, Florida and Upper East Side, Manhattan. Charged in 2008 with soliciting prostitution from minors, Epstein was treated with unheard of leniency, dictating the terms of his non-prosecution. The media virtually ignored the failures of the criminal justice system, and Epstein's friends and business partners brushed the allegations aside. But when in 2017 the U.S Attorney who approved Epstein's plea deal, Alexander Acosta, was chosen by President Trump as Labor Secretary, reporter Julie K. Brown was compelled to ask questions. Despite her editor's skepticism that she could add a new dimension to a known story, Brown determined that her goal would be to track down the victims themselves. Poring over thousands of redacted court documents, traveling across the country and chasing down information in difficulty and sometimes dangerous circumstances, Brown tracked down dozens of Epstein's victims, now young women struggling to reclaim their lives after the trauma and shame they had endured. Brown's resulting three-part series in the Miami Herald was one of the most explosive news stories of the decade, revealing how Epstein ran a global sex trafficking pyramid scheme with impunity for years, targeting vulnerable teens, often from fractured homes and then turning them into recruiters. The outrage led to Epstein's arrest, the disappearance and eventual arrest of his closest accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the resignation of Acosta. The financier's mysterious suicide in a New York City jail cell prompted wild speculation about the secrets he took to the grave-and whether his death was intentional or the result of foul play. Tracking Epstein’s evolution from a college dropout to one of the most successful financiers in the country—whose associates included Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton—Perversion of Justice builds on Brown's original award-winning series, showing the power of truth, the value of local reportage and the tenacity of one woman in the face of the deep-seated corruption of powerful men. 

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Ten Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe Cover Art

Ten Myths About Israel

Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe

“The most eloquent writer on Palestinian history” reveals t he myths and reality behind the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ( New Statesman ). The outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.   The “ten myths”—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, and accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo and include:   • Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration. • The Jews were a people without a land. • There is no difference between Zionism and Judaism. • Zionism is not a colonial project of occupation. • The Palestinians left their Homeland voluntarily in 1948. • The June 1967 War was a war of ‘No Choice’. • Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East. • The Oslo Mythologies • The Gaza Mythologies • The Two-State Solution For students, activists, and anyone interested in better understanding the news, Ten Myths About Israel is another groundbreaking study of the Israel-Palestine conflict from the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine .

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday - Hussein Agha & Robert Malley Cover Art

Tomorrow Is Yesterday

Tomorrow Is Yesterday Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine by Hussein Agha & Robert Malley

Two insiders explain why the Israeli – Palestinian peace process failed, and anticipate what lies ahead. On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than eleven hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike? In Tomorrow Is Yesterday , veteran negotiators Hussein Agha and Robert Malley offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas) and US presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and their participation in secret talks over decades, Agha and Malley offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides. They stress that the two-state solution became a global goal only when it was no longer viable; that U.S. officials preferred technical schemes to a frank reckoning with the past; that Hamas’s onslaught and Israel’s war of destruction were not historical exceptions but historical reenactments; and that the gaps separating Israelis and Palestinians have less to do with territorial allocation than with history and emotions.

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King of Kings - Scott Anderson Cover Art

King of Kings

King of Kings The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • From the author of the landmark bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern times. This groundbreaking work exposes the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government and traces the rise of religious nationalism, offering essential insights into today's global unrest. “A masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” —The Kirkus Prize 2025 Jury “An exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling.” — The New York Times Book Review “A masterful and gripping account. Anderson gives us a page-turning history lesson that is more relevant than ever.” —Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a finalist for the National Book Award On New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as “an island of stability “ due to “your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues.  Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran.  The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country.  He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War.  Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America’s standing in the world.  How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind? The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East.  The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions.  In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and now in the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template.  King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning.

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Persians - Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Cover Art

Persians

Persians The Age of the Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

A stunning portrait of the magnificent splendor and enduring legacy of ancient Persia    The Achaemenid Persian kings ruled over the largest empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the steppes of Asia and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. From the palace-city of Persepolis, Cyrus the Great, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs reigned supreme for centuries until the conquests of Alexander of Macedon brought the empire to a swift and unexpected end in the late 330s BCE.    In  Persians , historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the epic story of this dynasty and the world it ruled. Drawing on Iranian inscriptions, cuneiform tablets, art, and archaeology, he shows how the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the world’s first superpower—one built, despite its imperial ambition, on cooperation and tolerance. This is the definitive history of the Achaemenid dynasty and its legacies in modern-day Iran, a book that completely reshapes our understanding of the ancient world.  

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Unremitting - Gregg Zoroya Cover Art

Unremitting

Unremitting The Marine “Bastard” Battalion and the Savage Battle that Marked the True Start of America’s War in Iraq by Gregg Zoroya

From the former USA Today journalist and author of The Chosen Few , the untold story of The Battle of Ramadi, which led to a war that would last seven years, claim thousands of lives and evolve into a traumatic legacy for the US military and its veterans. Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were bench-warmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting. Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S. led Coalition swept into Baghdad and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter. When the battalion first arrived in the provincial capital of Ramadi, Iraq, in February of 2004, they were thrust into a savage battle where hundreds of insurgents organized a three-day offensive aimed at driving the Marines out of their city of 400,000. In Unremitting , journalist Gregg Zoroya tells the fast-paced, dramatic, and meticulously-researched story of the battle that truly began the Iraq War. Capturing the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle, Zoroya explores this vital part of American military history and beyond, showing how Ramadi was not just a game-changer for the Iraq War, but also for the marines, sailors, and soldiers who fought it, the trauma remaining with survivors more than two decades later.

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A Concise History of the Middle East - Ibrahim Al-Marashi & Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. Cover Art

A Concise History of the Middle East

A Concise History of the Middle East by Ibrahim Al-Marashi & Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.

A Concise History of the Middle East provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of this region. Spanning from the pre-Islamic era to the present, it explores the evolution of Middle Eastern institutions and culture, the influence of European colonialism and Western imperialism, regional modernization efforts, the struggle of various peoples for political independence, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the reassertion of Islamist values and power, the issues surrounding the Palestinian Question, and the Middle East following 9/11, the 2011 Arab uprisings, and the regional crisis that erupted after 7 October 2023. The thirteenth edition has been fully revised to reflect the most recent events in, and concerns of, the region, including its future in the face of climate change and challenges in Iraq, and developments in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In addition, the important role of Middle Eastern women in the history of the region is woven into the narrative. New parts and part timelines will help students grasp and contextualize the long and complicated history of the region. With updated biographical sketches and a new concluding chapter, this book remains the quintessential text for students of Middle East history.

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With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine, 1945–1948 - Dare Wilson Cover Art

With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine, 1945–1948

With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine, 1945–1948 by Dare Wilson

The 6th Airborne Division was a major element of the British Security Force in Palestine between September, 1945 and May 1948. Faced with the unenviable task of upholding the law in a lawless country, the individual British soldier had to face continual opposition from a hostile Jewish community. This story is described by General Wilson, then a Major, who served with the division during this period. The mission of British forces was simply "to keep the peace". To achieve this goal, the 6th Airborne Division conducted a variety of counter-insurgency operations in both urban and rural environments. These operations were designed to locate illegal arms caches, limit Jewish-Arab violence and capture dissidents who had attacked British positions. The destruction of the King David Hotel, the most famous terrorist attack of the Mandate period, is treated in great detail. With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine 1945 - 48 is a tribute to the British soldier. It is also an excellent case study in unconventional warfare. It will be of great interest to any student of the intricate problem that Palestine presents.

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Sword and Scimitar - Raymond Ibrahim & Victor Davis Hanson Cover Art

Sword and Scimitar

Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West by Raymond Ibrahim & Victor Davis Hanson

A sweeping history of the often-violent conflict between Islam and the West, shedding a revealing light on current hostilities The West and Islam -- the sword and scimitar -- have clashed since the mid-seventh century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the Roman emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long jihad on Christendom. Sword and Scimitar chronicles the decisive battles that arose from this ages-old Islamic jihad, beginning with the first major Islamic attack on Christian land in 636, through the Muslim occupation of nearly three-quarters of Christendom which prompted the Crusades, followed by renewed Muslim conquests by Turks and Tatars, to the European colonization of the Muslim world in the 1800s, when Islam largely went on the retreat -- until its reemergence in recent times. Using original sources in Arabic and Greek, preeminent historian Raymond Ibrahim describes each battle in vivid detail and explains how these wars and the larger historical currents of the age reflect the cultural fault lines between Islam and the West. The majority of these landmark battles -- including the battles of Yarmuk, Tours, Manzikert, the sieges at Constantinople and Vienna, and the crusades in Syria and Spain--are now forgotten or considered inconsequential. Yet today, as the West faces a resurgence of this enduring Islamic jihad, Sword and Scimitar provides the needed historical context to understand the current relationship between the West and the Islamic world -- and why the Islamic State is merely the latest chapter of an old history.

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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama - Nathan Thrall Cover Art

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker , The Economist, Time , The New Republic, and the Financial Times. Immersive and gripping, an intimate story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing, heartbreaking day. Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge. In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall—hailed for his “severe allergy to conventional wisdom” ( Time )—offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth.

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Preventing Palestine - Seth Anziska Cover Art

Preventing Palestine

Preventing Palestine A Political History from Camp David to Oslo by Seth Anziska

On the fortieth anniversary of the Camp David Accords, a groundbreaking new history that shows how Egyptian-Israeli peace ensured lasting Palestinian statelessness For seventy years Israel has existed as a state, and for forty years it has honored a peace treaty with Egypt that is widely viewed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Yet the Palestinians—the would-be beneficiaries of a vision for a comprehensive regional settlement that led to the Camp David Accords in 1978—remain stateless to this day. How and why Palestinian statelessness persists are the central questions of Seth Anziska’s groundbreaking book, which explores the complex legacy of the agreement brokered by President Jimmy Carter. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause. Combining astute political analysis, extensive original research, and interviews with diplomats, military veterans, and communal leaders, Preventing Palestine offers a bold new interpretation of a highly charged struggle for self-determination.

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The Confidence Men - Margalit Fox Cover Art

The Confidence Men

The Confidence Men How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time. FINALIST FOR THE EDGAR ® AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR • “Fox unspools Jones and Hill’s delightfully elaborate scheme in nail-biting episodes that advance like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine.”— The New York Times Book Review Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board—and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception—to build a trap for their captors that will ultimately lead them to freedom.  A gripping nonfiction thriller, The Confidence Men is the story of one of the only known con games played for a good cause—and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for “the Great War,” Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic on an Australian sheep ranch, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives.  Margalit Fox brings her “nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality” (Kathryn Schulz, New York ) to this tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22 .

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No Way Out - Mitch Weiss & Kevin Maurer Cover Art

No Way Out

No Way Out A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan by Mitch Weiss & Kevin Maurer

In a remote, enemy-held valley in Afghanistan, a Special Forces team planned to scale a steep mountain to surprise and capture a terrorist leader. But before they found the target, the target found them… The team was caught in a deadly ambush that not only threatened their lives, but the entire mission. The elite soldiers fought huddled for hours on a small rock ledge as rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-gun fire rained down on them. With total disregard for their own safety, they tended to their wounded and kept fighting to stay alive. When the battle finally ended, ten soldiers had earned Silver Stars—the Army’s third highest award for combat valor. It was the most Silver Stars awarded to any unit in one battle since Vietnam.   Based on dozens of interviews with those who were there, No Way Out is a compelling narrative of an epic battle that not only tested the soldiers’ mettle but serves as a cautionary tale. Be careful what you ask a soldier to do because they will die trying to accomplish their mission.

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The Yom Kippur War - Abraham Rabinovich Cover Art

The Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich

An updated edition that sheds new light on one of the most dramatic reversals of military fortune in modern history. The easing of Israeli military censorship after four decades has enabled Abraham Rabinovich to offer fresh insights into this fiercest of Israel-Arab conflicts. A surprise Arab attack on two fronts on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, with Israel’s reserves un-mobilized, triggered apocalyptic visions in Israel, euphoria in the Arab world, and fraught debates on both sides. Rabinovich, who covered the war for  The Jerusalem Post,  draws on extensive interviews and primary source material to shape his enthralling narrative. We learn of two Egyptian nationals, working separately for the Mossad, who supplied Israel with key information that helped change the course of the war; of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s proposal for a nuclear “demonstration” to warn off the Arabs; and of Chief of Staff David Elazar’s conclusion on the fifth day of battle that Israel could not win. Newly available transcripts enable us to follow the decision-making process in real time from the prime minister’s office to commanders studying maps in the field. After almost overrunning the Golan Heights, the Syrian attack is broken in desperate battles. And as Israel regains its psychological balance, General Ariel Sharon leads a nighttime counterattack across the Suez Canal through a narrow hole in the Egyptian line -- the turning point of the war.

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The Holocaust Industry - Norman G. Finkelstein Cover Art

The Holocaust Industry

The Holocaust Industry Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein

A scathing argument against those who exploit the Holocaust for personal and political gain—by a major figure at the center of the Israel-Palestine debate. “The most controversial book of the year.” — Guardian This iconoclastic study was one of the most widely debated books of 2000. Finkelstein indicts with both vigor and honesty those who exploit the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own personal political and financial gain. This new edition includes updated material discussing the initial reception to the book’s publication. In an iconoclastic and controversial new study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel’s evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America’s Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism’s victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.

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Land Between the Rivers - Bartle Bull Cover Art

Land Between the Rivers

Land Between the Rivers A 5,000-Year History of Iraq by Bartle Bull

The epic, five millennia history of the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that was the birthplace of civilization and remains today the essential crossroads between East and West At the start of the fourth millennium BC, at the edge of historical time, civilization first arrived with the advent of cities and the invention of writing that began to replace legend with history. This occurred on the floodplains of southern Iraq where the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates meet the Persian Gulf. By 3000 BC, a city called Uruk (from which “Iraq” is derived) had 80,000 residents. Indeed, as Bartle Bull reveals in his magisterial history, “if one divides the 5,000 years of human civilization into ten periods of five centuries each, during the first nine of these the world’s leading city was in one of the three regions of current day Iraq”—or to use its Greek name, Mesopotamia.  Inspired by extensive reporting from the region to spend a decade delving deep into its history, Bull chronicles the story of Iraq from the exploits of Gilgamesh (almost certainly an historical figure) to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 that ushered in its familiar modern era. The land between the rivers has been the melting pot and battleground of countless outsiders, from the Akkadians of Hammurabi and the Greeks of Alexander to the Ottomans of Suleiman the Magnificent. Here, by the waters of Babylon, Judaism was born and the Sunni-Shia schism took its bloody shape. Central themes play out over the millennia: humanity’s need for freedom versus the co-eternal urge of tyranny; the ever-present conflict and cross-fertilization of East and West with Iraq so often the hinge. We tend to view today’s tensions in the Middle East through the prism of the last hundred years since the Treaty of Versailles imposed a controversial realignment of its borders. Bartle Bull’s remarkable, sweeping achievement reminds us that the region defined by the land between the rivers has for five millennia played a uniquely central role on the global stage.

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The Nabataeans, Builders of Petra - Dan Gibson Cover Art

The Nabataeans, Builders of Petra

The Nabataeans, Builders of Petra by Dan Gibson

A fascinating look at the ancient Nabataean Kingdom! During the time of the Greek and Roman Empires, this small Arabian empire built spectacular cities in the Arabian Desert. Their ships and camel caravans traveled to far off exotic places to bring luxury goods to European markets. Since they held a monopoly on almost all eastern goods, they slowly raised their prices, until they almost brought the great European Empires to their knees. Flush with cash, they built the incredible city of Petra, hidden away in a mountain ravine. Discover all this and more in this exciting book!

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The Aleppo Codex - Matti Friedman Cover Art

The Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex In Pursuit of One of the World's Most Coveted, Sacred, and Mysterious Books by Matti Friedman

“A brilliant non-fiction thriller about an ancient copy of the Torah. Highly recommended.” —Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.

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The Jewish State - Theodor Herzl Cover Art

The Jewish State

The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl

Few books have changed human history as did Theodor Herzl's 1896 tract advocating the founding--even the inevitability--of a Jewish state. The new digital edition from Quid Pro Books adds a 2014 Foreword by Jerold S. Auerbach, Professor Emeritus of History at Wellesley College and recognized as a leading scholar in the U.S. on Judaism in America as well as Israeli history. Auerbach's extensive introduction brings home the importance and complexities of this historic work, of this visionary man. Founder himself of the World Zionist Organization and an Austrian intellectual, Herzl recognized that Jews would never be truly assimilated in any country they settled in, even over the course of centuries, and could only find a home in their own nation. Moreover, creating a new Jewish state would provide the opportunity to evolve it under advanced Western democratic ideals and structures. "The earth resounds with outcries against the Jews," Herzl wrote, "and these outcries have awakened the slumbering idea." The idea was a "very old one: the restoration of the Jewish State." But it was given a new voice and Utopian contours by Herzl.  Translated to English in this 1904 version and supplemented further with notes and a preface by Jacob De Haas in 1917, this version recounts steps that Herzl and others had taken after 1896 toward persuading world leaders of the necessity of creating a Jewish homeland in what is present-day Israel.  Adding the 2014 introductory essay by Professor Auerbach, the Quid Pro Books edition is the new, professional digital edition with accurate republication of an early and accepted translation of this historic work. This version features proper formatting and proofreading from the original text, active Table of Contents, and linked notes. This contemporary translation of and modern commentary on Der Judenstaat is Part of the History & Heroes Series.

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Nubian Kingdom - Kushite Empire (Egyptian History) Ancient History for Kids 5th Grade Social Studies - Baby Professor Cover Art

Nubian Kingdom - Kushite Empire (Egyptian History) Ancient History for Kids 5th Grade Social Studies

Nubian Kingdom - Kushite Empire (Egyptian History) Ancient History for Kids 5th Grade Social Studies by Baby Professor

What will your fifth grader take away from learning ancient history? Lots! Learning about ancient history will help your child realize how the world has changed. It will also help your learner understand how the events of the past can be used to predict the future. Learn from the great achievements of previous history makers to avoid committing the same horrific mistakes. Grab a copy today!

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Transformed by the People - Patrick Haenni & Jerome Drevon Cover Art

Transformed by the People

Transformed by the People Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's Road to Power in Syria by Patrick Haenni & Jerome Drevon

In December 2024, to global astonishment, former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led a coalition to overthrow the Syrian regime. This fascinating account unravels HTS's dramatic transformation since 2019, from a besieged insurgent enclave to a conservative Islamist government. Drawing on interviews with HTS leaders including Ahmad al-Sharaa himself--as well as diplomats, dissidents and opponents--the authors reveal the group's pragmatic evolution while ruling Idlib province, in the face of global and local constraints. They uncover how HTS approached religious minorities, redefined its understanding of sharia, and embraced a non-radical conservative society. HTS reshaped its identity not only in northwest Syria, but on the world stage, aligning with NATO member and secular republic Turkey, confronting both al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and marginalizing die-hards in its own ranks, in favor of a popular, mosque-based Islam. This book offers a glimpse into HTS's startling journey, blending frontline narratives with sharp analysis to decode the group's success in outmaneuvering the regime and mapping its own path to power.

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The Lemon Tree - Sandy Tolan Cover Art

The Lemon Tree

The Lemon Tree An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST "Extraordinary … A sweeping history of the Palestinian-Israeli conundrum … Highly readable and evocative." – The Washington Post The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people, one Israeli and one Palestinian, that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East – with an updated afterword by the author. In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next half century in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, demonstrating that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and transformation.

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Israel - Daniel Gordis Cover Art

Israel

Israel A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis

Winner of the Jewish Book of the Year Award The first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, "one of the most respected Israel analysts" (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem. Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse—but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation. With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.

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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe Cover Art

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian .' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees . His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ' A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue . There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

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The Ottomans - Marc David Baer Cover Art

The Ottomans

The Ottomans Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer

This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West.   The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War.     The Ottomans  vividly reveals the dynasty’s full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world. 

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Jesus - James Martin Cover Art

Jesus

Jesus A Pilgrimage by James Martin

“James Martin’s riveting new meditation on Jesus is one of the best books I’ve read in years—on any subject.”  — Mary Karr, author of Lit James Martin, SJ, gifted storyteller, editor at large of America magazine, popular media commentator, and New York Times bestselling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, brings the Gospels to life in Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and invites believers and seekers alike to experience Jesus through Scripture, prayer and travel. Combining the fascinating insights of historical Jesus studies with profound spiritual insights about the Christ of faith, Father Martin recreates the world of first-century Galilee and Judea to usher you into Jesus's life and times and show readers how Jesus speaks to us today. Martin also brings together the most up-to-date Scripture scholarship, wise spiritual reflections, and lighthearted stories about traveling through the Holy Land with a fellow (and funny) Jesuit, visiting important sites in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The person at the heart of the Gospels can seem impossibly distant. Stories about his astonishing life and ministry—clever parables that upended everyone's expectations, incredible healings that convinced even skeptics, nature miracles that dazzled the dumbstruck disciples—can seem far removed from our own daily lives, hard to understand, and at times irrelevant. But in Jesus you will come to know him as Father Martin knows him: Messiah and Savior, as well as friend and brother. WINNER OF THE 2016 ILLUMINATION AWARD (GOLD). WINNER OF THE 2015 CATHOLIC PRESS ASSOCIATION BOOK AWARD

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Guests of the Ayatollah - Mark Bowden Cover Art

Guests of the Ayatollah

Guests of the Ayatollah The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam by Mark Bowden

The New York Times –bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a "suspenseful and inspiring" account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 ( The Wall Street Journal ).   On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah , Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis.   Bowden takes us inside the hostages' cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.   "The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page." — Time   "A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   "Essential reading . . . A." — Entertainment Weekly

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A History of Israel - Howard M. Sachar Cover Art

A History of Israel

A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard M. Sachar

First published in 1976, Howard M. Sachar’s  A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time was regarded one of the most valuable works available detailing the history of this still relatively young country. Decades later, readers can again be immersed in this monumental work. The second edition of this volume covers topics such as the first of the Aliyahs in the 1880s; the rise of Jewish nationalism; the beginning of the political Zionist movement and, later, how the movement changed after Theodor Herzl; the Balfour Declaration; the factors that led to the Arab-Jewish confrontation; Palestine and its role both during the Second World War and after; the war of independence and the many wars that followed it over the next few decades; and the development of the Israeli republic and the many challenges it faced, both domestic and foreign, and still faces today. This is a truly enriching and exhaustive history of a nation that holds claim to one of the most complicated and controversial histories in the world.

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What Went Wrong? - Bernard Lewis Cover Art

What Went Wrong?

What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis

For many centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human achievement--the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first in the battlefield and the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life. In this intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed--how they had been overtaken, overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West. Lewis provides a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil. He shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry and military tactics, commerce and industry, government and diplomacy, education and culture. Lewis highlights the striking differences between the Western and Middle Eastern cultures from the 18th to the 20th centuries through thought-provoking comparisons of such things as Christianity and Islam, music and the arts, the position of women, secularism and the civil society, the clock and the calendar. Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis is one of the West's foremost authorities on Islamic history and culture. In this striking volume, he offers an incisive look at the historical relationship between the Middle East and Europe.

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Ravished Armenia - Aurora Mardiganian Cover Art

Ravished Armenia

Ravished Armenia The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Lived Through the Great Massacres by Aurora Mardiganian

She stood beside me—a slight little girl with glossy black hair. Until I spoke to her and she lifted her eyes in which were written the indelible story of her suffering, I could not believe that she was Aurora Mardiganian whom I had been expecting. She could not speak English, but in Armenian she spoke a few words of greeting. It was our first meeting and in the spring of last year. Several weeks earlier a letter had come to me telling me about this little Armenian girl who was to be expected, asking me to help her upon her arrival. The year before an Armenian boy had come from our relief station in the Caucasus and kind friends had made it possible to send him to boarding school. I had formed a similar plan to send Aurora to the same school when she should arrive. We talked about education that afternoon, through her interpreter, but she shook her head sadly. She would like to go to school, and study music as her father had planned she should before the massacres, but now she had a message to deliver—a message from her suffering nation to the mothers and fathers of the United States. The determination in the child’s eyes made me ask her her age and she answered “Seventeen.” Tired, and worn out nervously, as she was, Aurora insisted upon telling us of the scenes she had left behind her—massacres, families driven out across the desert, girls sold into Turkish harems, women ravished by the roadside, little children dying of starvation. She begged us to help her to help her people. “My father said America was the friend of the oppressed. General Andranik sent me here because he trusted you to help me,” she pleaded. And so her story was translated. Sometimes there had to be intervals of rest of several days, because her suffering had so unnerved her. She wanted to keep at it during all the heat of the summer, but by using the argument that she would learn English, we persuaded her to go to a camp off the coast of Connecticut for three weeks. You who read the story of Aurora Mardiganian’s last three years, will find it hard to believe that in our day and generation such things are possible. Your emotions will doubtless be similar to mine when I first heard of the suffering of her people. I remember very distinctly my feelings, when, early in October of 1917, I attended a luncheon given by the Executive Committee of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, to a group of seventeen American Consuls and missionaries who had just returned from Turkey after witnessing two years of massacre and deportation. I listened to persons, the truthfulness of whose statements I could not doubt, tell how a church had been filled with Christian Armenians, women and children, saturated with oil and set on fire, of refined, educated girls, from homes as good as yours or mine, sold in the slave markets of the East, of little children starving to death, and then to the plea for help for the pitiful survivors who have been gathered into temporary relief stations.

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The War That Made the Middle East - Mustafa Aksakal Cover Art

The War That Made the Middle East

The War That Made the Middle East World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire by Mustafa Aksakal

A new history that tells the story of how European imperial ambitions destroyed the Ottoman Empire during the Great War and created a divided and unstable Middle East The Ottoman Empire’s collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so-called Sick Man of Europe succumbed to its ailments—incompetent management, nationalism, and ethnic and religious conflict. In The War That Made the Middle East , Mustafa Aksakal overturns this conventional narrative. He describes how European imperial ambitions and the Ottoman commitment to saving its empire at any cost—including the destruction of the Armenian community and the deaths of more than a million Ottoman troops and other civilians—led to the empire’s violent partition and created a politically unstable Middle East. The War That Made the Middle East shows that, until 1914, the Ottoman Empire was a viable multiethnic, multireligious state, and that relations between the Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians of Palestine were relatively stable. When war broke out, the Ottoman government sought an alliance with the Entente but was rejected because of British and French designs on the Eastern Mediterranean. After the Ottomans entered the fight on the side of Germany and were defeated, Britain and France seized Ottoman lands, and new national elites in former Ottoman territories claimed their own states. The region was renamed “the Middle East,” erasing a robust and modernizing 600-year-old empire. A sweeping narrative of war, great power politics, and ordinary people caught up in the devastation, The War That Made the Middle East offers new insights about the Great War and its profound and lasting consequences.

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Israel In Palestine - Yakov M. Rabkin Cover Art

Israel In Palestine

Israel In Palestine Jewish Rejection of Zionism by Yakov M. Rabkin

In the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7 and the Israeli response, historian and current affairs commentator Yakov Rabkin brings together his writings that shed light on the violence in Palestine since the creation of the State of Israel. For decades, Yakov Rabkin has drawn attention to the danger Israel has posed to both Palestinians and Jews, both in Israel and in other countries. Far from protecting Jews, the State of Israel has contributed to creating and aggravating a situation that over time has become increasingly intractable. The author describes Palestine as it was on the eve of Zionist colonisation, recalling how Jews initially reacted to the Zionist movement and its goals. He highlights how Zionism, disdaining Jewish tradition, created a "new Hebrew man" steeped in a powerful mix of victimhood and exclusive nationalism and therefore oblivious to the fate of the Palestinians. He reminds us that Jewish identity is traditionally based on a spiritual commitment open to all races, the concept of Israel denoting not so much a geographical region but a community of believers. A return to the Land of Israel achieved by political and military means is antithetic to the Jewish tradition. In fact, Zionism has well-documented Protestant and Anglo-Saxon roots, which explains the massive support Israel enjoys among millions of Evangelical Christians around the world, and, on the other hand, why Jews have played such a prominent role in the pro-Palestinian protests sparked by violence against Gaza. At the same time, it shows how since 1967, there emerged a new national Judaism to provide religious legitimacy to the Zionist state. Avoiding polemics and sensationalism, this book allows the reader to reconsider the nature of the Israel/Palestine tragedy that has spilled over beyond Israel/Palestine. The book is rather short and targets the general reader. It requires no previous expertise in the subject, yet shows deeper and less known aspects of the conflict and, thus, opens perspectives on novel approaches to peace. This book has also been published in French, Japanese and Spanish language editions

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Cruise Through History - Itinerary 05 - Ports of Arabia to the Atlantic - Sherry Hutt Cover Art

Cruise Through History - Itinerary 05 - Ports of Arabia to the Atlantic

Cruise Through History - Itinerary 05 - Ports of Arabia to the Atlantic by Sherry Hutt

Itinerary V of Cruise through History's latest release, eleventh in the series, includes tales found in ports of Arabia, through the Suez Canal, along the southern Mediterranean, to Atlantic Ocean islands and Morocco. Just as travelers left the beginning of human civilization in northeast Africa and traveled west across the north coast of Africa and to islands along the southern Mediterranean, so this Itinerary follows currents west from Arabia, down the Nile, through the Suez Canal, to Malta, Mallorca, Gibraltar and out to the Atlantic. In the Atlantic cruise to Madeira, the Canary Islands of Spain and Azores of Portugal, before returning to North Africa and ports of Morocco. As this Itinerary moves from port to port, it traverses timelines from deep into the ancient era of cave dwellers of Gran Canaria to recent history, including formation of the United Arab Republic in 1970. Meet the real Hatshepsut of ancient Egypt and the real Lawrence of modern Arabia. Be inspired by Gertrude Bell, whose maps of Iraq were relied upon by Winston Churchill in drawing the landscape of the Middle East, and the tenacious Knights of St. John in Malta. Follow antics of the angry artist, Caravaggio, who was a Knight of St. John for two months, and the devious Amaro Pargo, eighteenth century hero of Tenerife. This itinerary begins at the Red Sea, with a Little Political/Biblical history and moves forward to ancient Arabia in Oman, before displaying the contrast of Bedouins of the Desert with modern sheikhs of the UAE, investing in the most advanced city on the planet in Dubai. The leading city of trade in the ancient world, Petra has its own story, where the ruler of Nabatean Petra, intermarried with Herod's family in Judea and the two rulers played a game of intrigue with Cleopatra VII, that would have impressed Caesar. Meet the Black pharaohs of the Kingdom of Kush, who united Egypt in the seventh century BCE and ruled Egypt for generations. Visit Ramesses in Luxor and Hat and Tut in the Valley of the Kings. Then solve the mystery of the Rosetta Stone, a competition between French and British scholars, as fierce as battles in this Itinerary and as great a feat as the story of building the Suez Canal. Enjoy the Long and Strategic History of Malta and the short and infamous tenure of Caravaggio as a Knight of Malta. Peer into the Co-Cathedral of St. John in Malta, the most opulent church in the world. Then island hop to Mallorca and ports of the Spanish Mediterranean to visit Bullrings without the Bulls. Gibraltar has its own stories of heroes in the little bit of Britain surrounded by Spain. History of Gibraltar is linked to the American Revolution, when Britain made Spain an offer to trade Gibraltar for Florida. Venture through the Pillars of Hercules, into the Atlantic and the lovely Portuguese island of Madeira, where the story is Wine, Wicker and the Women who saved the island economy with embroidery. Madeira history began in a Moroccan prison, then almost touched off a world war in 1907, when Germans came to build a health spa, that stole the view from a favorite hotel of British vacationers. In this island of flowers, visit Quintas, home of local royalty, host to royalty of the world. It is no chance of fate that Columbus came to Madeira to be inspired to discover a New World. Source of his inspiration, his mother-in-law, is its own story. End the voyage through Portuguese islands with a trip to Remote and Exclusive Azores. Discover how Dutchmen preceded Columbus to America. End this Itinerary at the Crossroads of Trade from Arabia to the Atlantic in Morocco in ports of Tangier and Casablanca. These fabled cities preserve the Kasbah and a real restaurant dedicated to fiction in the famous movie, Casablanca. Finish the tour in the Mosque of Modern Islam, built over the sea in Casablanca. 

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Destiny Disrupted - Tamim Ansary Cover Art

Destiny Disrupted

Destiny Disrupted A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary

Destiny Disrupted , “a must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world,” ( San Francisco Chronicle ) tells the history of the world from the Islamic point of view, and restores the centrality of the Muslim perspective, ignored for a thousand years. In Destiny Disrupted , Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history with the evolution of the Muslim community at the center. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed through a succession of far-flung empires, to the tangle of modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11. He introduces the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history, imparting not only what happened but how it is understood from the Muslim perspective. He clarifies why two great civilizations—Western and Muslim—grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive—had somehow hijacked destiny. With storytelling brio, humor, and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary illuminates a fascinating parallel to the narrative usually heard in the West. Destiny Disrupted offers a vital perspective on world conflicts many now find so puzzling.

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The Achilles Trap - Steve Coll Cover Art

The Achilles Trap

The Achilles Trap Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq by Steve Coll

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker • Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • Finalist for the PEN America Literary Award “Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” — The New York Times “Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” — The Washington Post "Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." — Air Mail From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a news-breaking investigation into one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons? 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 decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Steve Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap exposes how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it.

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Rise and Kill First - Ronen Bergman Cover Art

Rise and Kill First

Rise and Kill First The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of Israel’s targeted killing programs, which have shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the larger world—from the man hailed by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter.” “An exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject . . . full of shocking moments, surprising disturbances in a narrative full of fateful twists and unintended consequences.”— The New York Times WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Economist, The New York Times Book Review, BBC History Magazine, Mother Jones The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the larger world.

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Israel on the Brink - Ilan Pappe Cover Art

Israel on the Brink

Israel on the Brink And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence by Ilan Pappe

A renowned Israeli-British historian argues Israel is fracturing, and considers the issues that must be centered for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Jews alike In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously—and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment. Eight “mini-revolutions,” he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including: Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision;Establishing a new definition for the Jewish collective in historical Palestine;Finalizing a plan for the future of the Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since 1967; andCreating a new strategy for a united Palestinian national movement. Pappé concretely envisions a more just future—a democratic decolonized state for both Palestinians and Israelis—and how we might get there.

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Jerusalem - Simon Sebag Montefiore Cover Art

Jerusalem

Jerusalem The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED FOR 2024 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL BOOK OF THE YEAR "Spectacular. [Montefiore] really tells you what the life of the city has been like and why it means so much. You fall in love with the city. It’s a treasure. It’s a wonderful book." —Bill Clinton "Impossible to put down. . . . Vastly enjoyable." — The New York Times Book Review The history of Jerusalem is the story of the world: Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths. The Holy City and Holy Land are the battlefields for today’s multifaceted conflicts and, for believers, the setting for Judgment Day and the Apocalypse. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the “center of the world” and now the key to peace in the Middle East? Why is the Holy Land so important not just to the region and its many new players, but to the wider world too? Drawing on new archives and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city and turbulent region through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the kings, empresses, amirs, sultans, caliphs, presidents, autocrats, imperialists and warlords, poets, prophets, saints and rabbis who created, destroyed, chronicled, and believed in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. A classic of modern literature, this is not only the epic story of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism, co-existence, power and myth, but also a freshly updated, carefully balanced history of the Middle East, from King David to the new powers of the twenty-first century, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is how today’s Middle East was forged, how the Holy Land became sacred and how Jerusalem became Jerusalem—the only city that exists twice—in heaven and on earth. “Magnificent. . . . Montefiore barely misses a trick or a character intaking us through the city’s story with compelling, breathless tension.” — The Wall Street Journal

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Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine - Alan Dowty Cover Art

Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine

Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine Two Worlds Collide by Alan Dowty

The historian and expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations offers "a well-written, well-balanced" account of cultural conflicts in the region before WWI (Anita Shapira, author of Israel: A History ). When did the Arab-Israeli conflict begin? Some discussions focus on the 1967 war, some go back to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and others look to the beginning of the British Mandate in 1922. Alan Dowty, however, traces the earliest roots of the conflict to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, arguing that this historical approach highlights constant clashes between religious and ethnic groups in Palestine. Dowty demonstrates that, during the 19th century, there was an overwhelming hostility to European foreigners, and that Arab residents viewed new Jewish settlers as European. He also shows that Jewish settlers had tremendous incentive to minimize all obstacles to settlement, including the inconvenient hostility of the existing population. Dowty's thorough research reveals how events that occurred over 125 years ago shaped the implacable conflict that dominates the Middle East today.

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Thirteen Days in September - Lawrence Wright Cover Art

Thirteen Days in September

Thirteen Days in September The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace by Lawrence Wright

A dramatic, illuminating day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter convinced Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to sign a peace treaty--the first treaty in the modern Middle East, and one which endures to this day.   With his hallmark insight into the forces at play in the Middle East and his acclaimed journalistic skill, Lawrence Wright takes us through each of the thirteen days of the Camp David conference, delving deeply into the issues and enmities between the two nations, explaining the relevant background to the conflict and to all the major participants at the conference, from the three heads of state to their mostly well-known seconds working furiously behind the scenes. What emerges is not what we've come to think of as an unprecedented yet "simple" peace. Rather, Wright reveals the full extent of Carter's persistence in pushing peace forward, the extraordinary way in which the participants at the conference--many of them lifelong enemies--attained it, and the profound difficulties inherent in the process and its outcome, not the least of which has been the still unsettled struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In Thirteen Days in September , Wright gives us a gripping work of history and reportage that provides an inside view of how peace is made.

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Return of a King - William Dalrymple Cover Art

Return of a King

Return of a King The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 by William Dalrymple

From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.

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The Daughters of Kobani - Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Cover Art

The Daughters of Kobani

The Daughters of Kobani A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The extraordinary story of the women who took on the Islamic State and won “ The Daughters of Kobani is an unforgettable and nearly mythic tale of women's power and courage. The young women profiled in this book fought a fearsome war against brutal men in impossible circumstances — and proved in the process what girls and women can accomplish when given the chance to lead. Brilliantly researched and respectfully reported, this book is a lesson in heroism, sacrifice, and the real meaning of sisterhood. I am so grateful that this story has been told. ” — Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love “ Absolutely fascinating and brilliantly written, The Daughters of Kobani is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand both the nobility and the brutality of war. This is one of the most compelling stories in modern warfare. ” — Admiral William H. McRaven, author of Make Your Bed In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States. In the process, these women would spread their own political vision, determined to make women's equality a reality by fighting—house by house, street by street, city by city—the men who bought and sold women. Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world's best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, bestselling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace. In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide. In the process they earned the respect—and significant military support—of U.S. Special Operations Forces. Rigorously reported and powerfully told, The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women's lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond.

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The Question of Palestine - Edward W. Said Cover Art

The Question of Palestine

The Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said

This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate--one that remains as critical as ever. • With a new foreword by Saree Makdisi "A compelling call for identity and justice." —Anthony Lewis "Books such as Mr. Said's need to be written and read in the hope that understanding will provide a better chance of survival." — The New York Times Book Review With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile's passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied--as well as in the conscience of the West. He has updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War, and the ongoing MIddle East peace initiative. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.

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The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process - Robert Spencer Cover Art

The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process

The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process by Robert Spencer

Every new American President has a plan to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and every one fails. Every “peace process” has failed in its primary objective: to establish a stable and lasting accord between the two parties, such that they can live together side-by-side in friendship rather than enmity. But why? And what can be done instead? While this failure is a consistent pattern stretching back decades, there is virtually no public discussion or even basic understanding of the primary reason for this failure. The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the “peace process,” Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict. The Palestinian Delusion offers a general overview of the Zionist settlement of Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Arab Muslim reaction to these events. It explores the dramatic and little-known history of the various peace efforts—showing how and why they invariably broke down or failed to be implemented fully. The Palestinian Delusion also provides shocking evidence from the Palestinian media, as well as statements from the Palestinian leadership, showing that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will never work. But there is still cause for hope. Spencer delineates a realistic, viable alternative to the endless and futile “peace process,” that shows how the Jewish State and the Palestinian Arabs can truly coexist in peace—without illusions or unrealistic expectations.

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Syria - David W. Lesch Cover Art

Syria

Syria The Fall of the House of Assad by David W. Lesch

When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad came to power upon his father's death in 2000, many in- and outside Syria held high hopes that the popular young doctor would bring long-awaited reform, that he would be a new kind of Middle East leader capable of guiding his country toward genuine democracy. David Lesch was one of those who saw this promise in Assad. A widely respected Middle East scholar and consultant, Lesch came to know the president better than anyone in the West, in part through a remarkable series of meetings with Assad between 2004 and 2009. Yet for Lesch, like millions of others, Assad was destined to disappoint. In this timely book, the author explores Assad's failed leadership, his transformation from bearer of hope to reactionary tyrant, and his regime's violent response to the uprising of his people in the wake of the Arab Spring. Lesch charts Assad's turn toward repression and the inexorable steps toward the violence of 2011 and 2012. The book recounts the causes of the Syrian uprising, the regime's tactics to remain in power, the responses of other nations to the bloodshed, and the determined efforts of regime opponents. In a thoughtful conclusion, the author suggests scenarios that could unfold in Syria's uncertain future.

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Palestine 1936 - Oren Kessler Cover Art

Palestine 1936

Palestine 1936 The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict by Oren Kessler

2024 Winner, Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, The Sami Rohr Jewish Literary Institute One of the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2023 Named a Booklist Editors' Choice in History: Adult Books, 2023 Finalist, Writing Based on Archival Material: National Jewish Book Awards Finalist, Sophie Brody Medal, American Library Association "[Kessler] has done an exceptional job and opened new vistas on troubles past and present." - Wall Street Journal "Kessler's history is key to understanding the current situation between Israelis and Palestinians." -Booklist, Starred Review A gripping, profoundly human, yet even-handed narrative of the origins of the Middle East conflict, with enduring resonance and relevance for our time. In spring 1936, the Holy Land erupted in a rebellion that targeted both the local Jewish community and the British Mandate authorities that for two decades had midwifed the Zionist project. The Great Arab Revolt would last three years, cost thousands of lives-Jewish, British, and Arab-and cast the trajectory for the Middle East conflict ever since. Yet incredibly, no history of this seminal, formative first "Intifada" has ever been published for a general audience. The 1936–1939 revolt was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced, uniting rival families, city and country, rich and poor in a single struggle for independence. Yet the rebellion would ultimately turn on itself, shredding the social fabric, sidelining pragmatists in favor of extremists, and propelling waves of refugees from their homes. British forces' aggressive counterinsurgency took care of the rest, finally quashing the uprising on the eve of World War II. The revolt to end Zionism had instead crushed the Arabs themselves, leaving them crippled in facing the Jews' own drive for statehood a decade later. To the Jews, the insurgency would leave a very different legacy. It was then that Zionist leaders began to abandon illusions over Arab acquiescence, to face the unnerving prospect that fulfilling their dream of sovereignty might mean forever clinging to the sword. The revolt saw thousands of Jews trained and armed by Britain-the world's supreme military power-turning their ramshackle guard units into the seed of a formidable Jewish army. And it was then, amid carnage in Palestine and the Hitler menace in Europe, that portentous words like "partition" and "Jewish state" first appeared on the international diplomatic agenda. This is the story of two national movements and the first sustained confrontation between them. The rebellion was Arab, but the Zionist counter-rebellion-the Jews' military, economic, and psychological transformation-is a vital, overlooked element in the chronicle of how Palestine became Israel. Today, eight decades on, the revolt's legacy endures. Hamas's armed wing and rockets carry the name of the fighter-preacher whose death sparked the 1936 rebellion. When Israel builds security barriers, sets up checkpoints, or razes homes, it is evoking laws and methods inherited from its British predecessor. And when Washington promotes a "two-state solution," it is invoking a plan with roots in this same pivotal period. Based on extensive archival research on three continents and in three languages, Palestine 1936 is the origin story of the world's most intractable conflict, but it is also more than that. In Oren Kessler's engaging, journalistic voice, it reveals world-changing events through extraordinary individuals on all sides: their loves and their hatreds, their deepest fears and profoundest hopes.

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Empire in Ancient Assyria - A.J. Carmichael Cover Art

Empire in Ancient Assyria

Empire in Ancient Assyria by A.J. Carmichael

In the heart of Mesopotamia rose one of history's most disciplined and awe-inspiring civilizations — the Assyrian Empire, a realm that transformed the art of kingship, war, and recordkeeping into instruments of divine order. Empire in Ancient Assyria immerses the reader in a world where clay tablets governed destiny, where cities like Nineveh and Assur pulsed with the rhythm of conquest and faith, and where kings believed themselves chosen by the gods to bring cosmic order to earth. Drawing from archaeological discoveries, royal inscriptions, and the remarkable Eponym Canon , this work unveils how the Assyrians measured time itself — turning governance into sacred mathematics and history into the architecture of eternity. Through vivid narrative and deep scholarship, Empire in Ancient Assyria traces the empire's rise from a cluster of riverine city-states to the greatest military and administrative power of the ancient world. It explores the celestial philosophies that shaped their calendar, the monumental palaces that immortalized their kings, and the libraries that preserved the wisdom of millennia. This is not merely the story of an empire—it is the chronicle of humanity's earliest attempt to master time, memory, and meaning itself, carved in stone and fired in the furnaces of history.

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American Sniper - Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice Cover Art

American Sniper

American Sniper The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and the source for Clint Eastwood’s blockbuster, Academy-Award nominated movie.  “An amazingly detailed account of fighting in Iraq--a humanizing, brave story that’s extremely readable.” — PATRICIA CORNWELL, New York Times Book Review "Jaw-dropping...Undeniably riveting." —RICHARD ROEPER, Chicago Sun-Times From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him “The Legend”; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates—and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris.  Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

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