History Middle

On September 11, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her daughters would never be the same again.

Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam's two holiest cities. It is also one of the world's only absolute monarchies. How did Saudi Arabia get to where it is today?

A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream - the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals - may die.

The second in the New York Times bestselling Magdalene Line Trilogy continues as journalist Maureen Pascal searches for the mysterious Book of Love—a lost gospel allegedly written by Jesus. When Maureen receives a mysterious package containing an ancient Latin manuscript, she is stunned to...

Jewish Voice for Peace has curated a collection of essays that provides a diversity of perspectives and standpoints. Each contribution explores critical questions concerning uses and abuses of antisemitism in the twenty-first-century, focusing on the intersection between antisemitism, accusations of antisemitism, and Palestinian human rights activism.

The Hittites, Canaanites, and Israelites were three ancient civilizations entwined with one another. In this new captivating history audiobook, you will discover the truth about these startling ancient civilizations.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and hailed as “the best history of oil ever written” by Business Week, Daniel Yergin’s “spellbinding…irresistible” (The New York Times) account of the global pursuit of oil, money, and power addresses the ongoing energy crisis. Now with an epilogue that...

This work presents a composite view of medieval English university life. The author offers detailed insights into the social and economic conditions of the lives of students, their teaching masters and fellows. The experiences of college benefactors, women and university servants are also examined, demonstrating the vibrancy they brought to university life.

Working from both primary and secondary sources, Walter Reid explores Britain's role in the creation of the modern Middle East and the rise of Zionism from the early years of the twentieth century to 1948, when Britain handed over Palestine to United Nations' control. From the decisions that Britain made has flowed much of the instability of the region and of the worldwide tensions that threaten the twenty-first century; this thought-provoking book considers how much Britain was to blame.

There was a time when Israel could do no wrong in America's eyes. That time is long past, and justly so - no nation is absolutely perfect, particularly not one that is engaged in a conflict as long as the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the myth of the perfect Israel has been supplanted by a far more deleterious myth: the myth of the evil Israel. This new myth has so pervaded contemporary culture that the history of Israel - as well documented as it is - has been recast and retold to fit a false narrative of Israel as violent occupier.

Justice for Some offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures—from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza—Noura Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests than the Palestinians'. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable.

The sheer importance of Sumerian culture in regards to world culture as a whole is impossible to overstate. This civilization is single-handedly responsible for some of the most major innovations in nearly every field relevant to maintaining a civilized society - this includes religion, lawmaking, architecture, schooling, art, literature, and even entertainment. Naturally, most of what we see as negative aspects of society were established in ancient Sumer as well. There wasn’t an aspect of Sumerian life that wasn’t plagued with corruption or devastation of one form or another.

Christians have lived in Palestine since the earliest days of the Jesus movement. The Palestinian church predates Islam. Yet Palestinian Christians find themselves marginalized and ostracized. In the heated tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the voices of Palestinian Christians are often unheard and ignored. This remarkable book provides an opportunity to hear the realities of life on the ground from a leading Palestinian pastor and theologian.

Captain Alan Lewrie returns for his tenth roaring adventure on the high seas. This time, it's off to a failing British intervention on the ultra-rich French colony of Saint Domingue, wracked by an utterly cruel and bloodthirsty slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the future father of...

There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism.

Sultan Mehmet II, known to his countrymen as -the Conqueror- and to much of Europe as -the Terror of the World,- was once Europe's most feared and powerful ruler. Now, Turkey's most beloved American scholar, John Freely, brings to life this charismatic hero of one of the richest histories in the world. Mehmet reigned for thirty years, during which time his armies extended the borders of his empire halfway across Asia Minor and as far into Europe as Hungary and Italy.

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan - a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam. Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood.

People have historically been creatures of habit and curiosity at the same time, two parts of the human condition that constantly conflict with each other. This has always been true, but at certain moments in history it has been abundantly true, especially during the mid-14th century, when a boon in exploration and travel came up against a fear of the unknown.

Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving, and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.

It's a great irony that Israel was more secure as an idea than its ever been as a nation with an army. In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it - by taking what had been a national religion, identified with a particular place, and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews.