Middle World

In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian's world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government's mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable - that they are all being driven to their deaths - he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope.

On March 21, 1968, Yasir Arafat and his guerrillas made the fateful decision to break with conventional guerrilla tactics, choosing to stand and fight an Israeli attack on the al-Karama refugee camp in Jordan. They suffered terrible casualties, but they won a stunning symbolic victory that transformed Arafat into an Arab hero and allowed him to launch a worldwide campaign, one that would reshape Cold War diplomacy and revolutionary movements everywhere. In The Global Offensive, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin offers new insights into the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

How did the Bushes, America's most powerful political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi counterparts? Why did the Bush administration approve the secret airlift of 140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, just after September 11? Did one of...

With his Pulitzer Prize-winning Annals of the Former World, John McPhee explores not only the richly varied surface of the United States, but the geological wonders hidden deep beneath our feet. In this final book of the series, he embarks on a fascinating journey across the basement of the continent - the land masses forming Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and thereabouts - with a professor and geochronologist acting as a guide.

A quarter of a century after the end of Communism swept away the ideological conflict of the "short 20th century", a new world is once again taking shape, this time in the Middle East. But what does the crisis in the region, and its refugee exodus into Europe, signify for the future of the world? And why has the noble dream of nation-building failed? Focusing mainly on religion, ideology or economics, most analysis ignored one crucial factor: asabiyyah, or group feeling, something outlined six and a half centuries ago.

The Jewish people are one of the oldest living people groups on the planet. The Jews lived alongside the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Sumerians - all of whom have since disappeared from the pages of history. Yet the Jews still remain. Despite all of the odds, Jewish culture, language, laws, and religion have remained intact over the course of thousands of years.

Abbas Kazerooni is not yet 10, but he’s suddenly forced to leave his parents, his friends - his entire world - and flee Tehran. The Iran-Iraq war is at its bloodiest, and the Ayatollahs who rule Iran have reduced the recruitment age for the army. If Abbas doesn’t escape, it’s almost certain that he will be drafted and die fighting for a regime that has stripped his family of all they have.

The term Moor is a historical rather than an ethnic name. It is an invention of European Christians for the Islamic inhabitants of Maghreb (North Africa), Andalusia (Spain), Sicily and Malta, and was sometimes use to designate all Muslims. It is derived from Mauri, the Latin name for the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania, which ranged across modern Algeria and Morocco. Saracen was another European term used to designate Muslims, though it usually referred to the Arabic peoples of the Middle East and derives from an ancient name for the Arabs, Sarakenoi.

David Rundell - one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab world.

Is it really possible to love one's enemies? That's the question that sparked a fascinating and, at times, terrifying journey into the heart of the Middle East during the summer of 2008. It was a trip that began in Egypt, passed beneath the steel-and-glass high-rises of Saudi Arabia, then wound through the bullet-pocked alleyways of Beirut and dusty streets of Damascus, before ending at the cradle of the world's three major religions: Jerusalem.

Esta Historia de las mujeres responde a la necesidad de ceder la palabra a las mujeres. Alejadas, desde la Antigüedad, del escenario donde se enfrentan a los dueños del destino, reconstruir su historia significa describir su lento acceso a los medios de expresión y su conversión en persona que asume un papel protagonista. Este análisis implica, asimismo, que las relaciones entre los sexos condicionan los acontecimientos, o la evolución de las sociedades. No se buscan conclusiones tajantes sino que las mujeres encuentren, al fin, su espacio propio.

The birth of South Sudan was celebrated the world round. But the celebration would not last: South Sudan's freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their American backers. Drawing on extraordinary personal stories of identity, liberation, and survival, this narrative tells an epic story of paradise won and then lost. Zach Vertin's firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring listeners on an extraordinary journey into the rise and fall of the world's newest state.

When thinking about America's role in the world, Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Barack Obama may not seem to have a lot in common. But they do. While divided by background, generation, and political party, they exemplify a distinct and underappreciated tradition of American leadership: The Middle Way. As the scholar and former senior foreign policy official Derek Chollet shows in this deeply researched book, these three presidents took a centrist - and effective - approach to foreign policy.

Les proverbes sont une véritable sagesse populaire. Ils sont le fruit de centaines d'années d'histoires, de légendes, de spiritualité d'un peuple. Transmis oralement pendant des siècles, leur vérité et leur simplicité nous parlent immédiatement. Ces proverbes visent à donner accès à un peuple, une culture populaire, dans un format accessible à tous. Un proverbe est plus qu'une phrase anodine, ce peut être un trait d'esprit, un résumé d'une pensée complexe, une maxime, une ouverture sur une réflexion plus profonde.

Almustafa, the prophet of Orphalese, awakes to the fulfillment of his 12-year wish: the arrival of his ship to take him home. Suddenly, he and the rest of the inhabitants are faced with his imminent departure. With the assistance of the seer Almitra, he is first set upon an unexpected course of disclosing his perspectives on life to the inhabitants of Orphalese; a process that holds new insights and realizations even for Almustafa, himself.

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, in December 2010, sparking a wave of popular uprisings that would topple dictatorial regimes across North Africa and the Middle East, observers hailed the onset of a great “Arab Awakening.” But this wasn’t the first time people in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere across the region had taken to the streets demanding fundamental change.

For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals.

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

In The Crash of Flight 3804, Investigative Journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies - the British, the French, and the Russians - in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East. Through vivid storytelling, extensive research, and deep analysis of region-defining maps, she reveals how feverish competition among intelligence networks, military, and Big Oil interests have fueled indiscriminate attacks and targeted killings that continue to this day.

Guinness is an irresistible lead character - smart and steadfast but also soulful and delightfully snarky. While the narrative offers adventure and some tragedy throughout, it also delivers humor and great tenderness. The scenes in Afghanistan, where Guinness is eventually deployed, are portrayed with a visceral grittiness. Readers can practically taste the ever present dust permeating the barren landscape. This is Jones’ first volume in her K-9 Heroes series, and it is a lovely tribute to the brave canine officers in the military.