History Middle

On October 7, 2023—the Sabbath and the final day of the holiday of Sukkot—the Gaza-based terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on the people of Israel. Crashing through the border, attacking from the sea and air, militants indiscriminately massacred civilians in what became one of the worst terror attacks in modern history, and the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

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.

This audiobook includes tales of gods and goddesses, both major and minor, as well as kings and heroes, both historical and mythical. One such king is the hero of what many scholars believe to be the first written epic: Gilgamesh. In addition to creating connections between the human world and the divine, Sumerian myths explain how the world came to be in the first place. These myths establish the cosmic order, which places the greater gods, or Annunaki, at the top of the hierarchy, with the lesser gods, or Igigi, below them.

The history of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their kings is a story of epic heroes and villains. David was the God-chosen savior who fought giants, and the remarkable individual who inspired the world’s greatest artists to create their immortal sculptures and paintings. Solomon is regarded as the author of many of the proverbs that we still use - and the ancient sources say he was married to 70 foreign princesses. The protagonists of this book also include famous rulers of the ancient world, such as Queen of Sheba and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

The politics and recent history of the Middle East can seem baffling to outsiders. Nowhere was that more evident than during the Lebanon War that raged in 1982. Even contemporary reporting often made fundamental mistakes, and there was little general understanding of what was happening and why. This conflict involved a bewildering number of groups and influences from different parts of the world. The precipitating event was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, carried out by members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

Embark on an extraordinary journey through time as you explore the pivotal Siege of Baghdad, a confrontation that forever altered the trajectory of human history. In "1258: The Siege of Baghdad," delve into the Mongol-Abbasid conflict of the 13th century—a clash not merely of empires but of civilizations, ideas, and destinies.

Michael Korda's Hero is the story of an epic life on a grand scale: a revealing, in-depth, and gripping biography of the extraordinary, mysterious, and dynamic Englishman whose daring exploits and romantic profile, including his blond, sun-burnished good looks and flowing white robes, made him an object of intense fascination, still famous the world over as "Lawrence of Arabia".

The ancient Near East is known as the "cradle of civilization" - and for good reason. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were home to an extraordinarily rich and successful culture. Indeed, it was a time and place of earth-shaking changes for humankind: the beginnings of writing and law, kingship and bureaucracy, diplomacy and state-sponsored warfare, mathematics and literature. This Very Short Introduction audiobook offers a fascinating account of this momentous time in human history.

The Renaissance was only a short period in European history, but it was the revolution needed to move from the Middle Ages to the modern world. It was full of new philosophies and art, new architecture and inventions, and new governments and churches. In a short span of time, the Europeans found themselves creating, acting, and living in completely new ways. People now had access to new ideas, and Europe would never be the same again.

An alphabetical exploration of the people, geography, animals, plants, history, and culture of Israel.

Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played; an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert; and a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rachel Shabi was born in Israel to Jewish Iraqi parents. When she was a child her family emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1974. Their leaving reversed the spiritual trek of the Jewish Diaspora, around the world whose members wistfully repeat at the Passover tables, "Next year in Jerusalem." Years later, in fact, Shabi went back to visit and to live for an extended period, but her attitude toward her former homeland is conflicted by the longstanding discrimination suffered by Arab Jews in Israel.

Explore a major turning point in the history of Europe and the Middle East. The fall of Constantinople was an event that had great repercussions across both East and West. Why did it happen? How did it happen? And what was the aftermath?

With her father murdered and her home burned, lovely Alyx Blackelt fled to the woods - and sanctuary in the camp of Raine Montgomery, a nobleman outlawed by the king's edict. There she hid her beauty in the guise of a boy and her sorrow in her work as Montgomery's squire. But how long could such loveliness as hers be hidden? How long could such a gallant man's desires be blind?

In this vivid first-person narrative, a Special Operations Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and his commanding general give fascinating and detailed accounts of America's fight against one of the most barbaric insurgencies the world has ever seen. In the summer of 2014, three years after America's full troop withdrawal from the Iraq War, President Barack Obama authorized a small task force to push back into Baghdad. Their mission: protect the Iraqi capital and US embassy from a rapidly emerging terrorist threat.

During the 45 years of the Cold War, policymakers from the US and the Soviet Union vied for primacy in the Middle East. Their motives, long held by historians to have had an ideological thrust, were, in fact, to gain control over access to oil and claim geographic and strategic advantage. In his new audiobook, Rashid Khalidi, considered the foremost US historian of the Middle East, makes the compelling case that the dynamics that played out during the Cold War continue to exert a profound influence even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A hundred years ago, many theorists believed - just as they did at the beginning of our 21st century - that the world had reached a state of economic perfection, a never-before-seen human interdependence that would lead to universal growth and prosperity. Then, as now, the German mark was one of the most trusted currencies in the world. Yet the early years of the Weimar Republic in Germany witnessed the most calamitous meltdown of a developed economy in modern times.

With this book, Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia.

Incredible facts about this Ottoman Empire still surprise anyone who starts discovering those stories. You’ll find out that, for quite a while, this Islamic state was effectively ruled by women, and that’s just the beginning.

Despite losing the 1948 War, Arab nations throughout the Middle East had still refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. After the Suez Crisis, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser envisioned creating a unified Arab world, commonly referred to as pan-Arabism. Nasser was the consummate pan-Arab leader in the 1960s, positioning himself as the leader of the Arab world through increasing incitement against Israel with rhetoric. Israel found itself in possession of more land after 1948 than envisioned by the U.N. Partition Plan.