Middle World

A heartbreaking, heart-mending novel of love, grief, friendship, and community. March 1987. The FDA has just approved AZT as the first drug to treat AIDS. But it's too late for Iris’s dad. He’s dying, confined to a hospital bed in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, J.R. (who...

World history began in the Persian Gulf. The ancient port cities that dotted its coastlines created the first global seaboard, a place from where faiths and cultures from around the world set sail and made contact. More than a history, The Center of the World shows us that contradictions that define our modern age have always been present.

A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat - female journalists - are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique - as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers.

In 2003 Rachel Aspden arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. The two thirds of Egypt's eight million citizens under the age of 30 were stifled, broken, and frustrated, caught between a dictatorship that had nothing to offer them and their autocratic parents' generation, defined by tradition and obedience. In January 2011 the young people's patience ran out.

From the New York Times reporter whose beat is culture and ideas comes a fascinating, revelatory, and timely social history of the concept of middle age. For the first time ever, the middle-aged make up the biggest, richest, and most influential segment of the country, yet the history of middle age has remained largely untold. This important and immensely listenable book finally fills the gap.

This audiobook explains the fault lines that have often plagued US efforts to protect its national interests in the region and how these ongoing faults have led to a precipitous decline in American influence. It also includes some recommendations as to how this decline can be reversed.

As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots - Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators - to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.

Dr. Elisha Waldman's years at Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center were filled in equal measure with a deep sense of accomplishment, with frustration when regional politics sometimes got in the way of his patients' care, and with tension over the fine line he would have to walk when the religious traditions of some of his patients' families made it difficult for him to give these children the care he felt they deserved. Navigating the baffling Israeli bureaucracy, the ever-present threat of war, and cultural clashes, Waldman learned to be content with small victories.

A spirited artist with a can-do attitude, Yvonne Wakefield leaves behind a secure life in the lush Pacific Northwest to teach art in the desert state of Kuwait. Over the course of six years, she will instruct university-aged Muslim women, earn her students' trust, and learn the consequences of freedom of expression, taken for granted in one culture but not granted in another. Despite obstacles set by her detractors, she persists, and her students and life in Kuwait flourish.

Four preteens receive mysterious enamel pins that grant them superpowers. Together, they must put aside their differences and embark on an epic journey to find the mysterious pinmaker, discover the truth behind the new theme park, and of course, trade pins—all while learning how to navigate...

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe, but in the Pacific, American soldiers face an enemy who will not surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Meanwhile, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the...

Eleventh century, Northern Spain. Isabella has been a nun in the Christian kingdom of Galicia since she was a child, a gifted herbalist leading a quiet and spiritual life, devoted to God. But on a rare journey outside of the convent, she is taken by Viking raiders and sold to Morocco as a slave. Cruelly treated by her first owner, salvation comes from an unlikely source: Yusuf bin Tashfin, leader of a vast Muslim army intent on conquering all of North Africa. Isabella must struggle not only to survive her new life but to hold true to her faith, which is tested by great dangers...

רצח מסתורי, פרשת-אהבים חשאית, דירת מסתור שאיש אינו יודע מה מתרחש בה באמת — אלה הם כמה מצירי העלילות שהרומאן הזה, המתרחש כולו בתל אביב, בנוי מהן. מקצת גורלות החיים המצוירים כאן מתקיימים זה בצד זה, ומקצתם נפגשים, נתקלים, ואף נחבטים זה בזה בכוח. בתוך כך מתחוללות דרמות קטנות וגדולות, עצב מתערבב עם צחוק, טרגדיה נושקת לגרוטסקה, וכך הולכת ונטווית פיסת נוף תל אביבית עכשווית: סביב בית-דירות, משרדים, רחובות, גינה ציבורית, ובייחוד סביב האנשים, שקורמים כאן עור וגידים, חיים ונושמים מכוח כתיבתו המדויקת, הקולעת כל-כך של הסופר.

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.

A young American lost in Russia. An FBI-cover up. A mystery leading from Washington to the heart of the Kremlin's war in Ukraine. When Billy Reilly vanished, his parents embarked on a desperate search for answers. Was their son’s disappearance connected to his mysterious work for the FBI, or...

Fighting climate change, saving democracy, and eradicating poverty are urgent global challenges, yet the world's leaders continue to pursue outdated policies that focus on one while worsening the tradeoffs between each of them. Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World shows how the nations of the world can achieve all three objectives.

A Medieval Life offers a biography of one woman, a portrait of her world, and an introduction to historical method. Written in a clear and accessible style, it reworks a well-loved book to provide an entirely new resource for students, teachers, and general listeners. Like Cecilia Penifader, most people in the Middle Ages were peasants, humble people living socially below the knights, bishops, and kings who figure so large in history books. Judith M. Bennett shows that peasants, too, made history.

Jerusalem, 1947: Judith, a young Jewish woman who survived Dachau concentration camp, arrives in Palestine after a treacherous journey and seeks refuge with her only remaining relative, her uncle. When Judith learns her uncle has died, she tries to take her own life in despair. In Hadassah Hospital, Hana, an Arab nurse, saves Judith’s life by donating her own blood. A fragile bond of friendship develops between the two women, but it will face a harsh test over time.

The Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries. Its soldiers fought, died, and conquered lands on three different continents, making it one of the few stable multi-ethnic empires in history - and likely one of the last. Thus, it's somewhat inevitable that the history of its dissolution is at the heart of complex geopolitical disputes, as well as sectarian tensions that are still key to understanding the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

“Glorious. A story that will be found and enjoyed and dreamed about for years to come.”—Neil Gaiman A stunning modern-day Dickensian fable and a celebration of friendship and bravery for freethinkers everywhere. It all starts on the morning the letter D disappears from language. First, it...