Middle World

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist listener and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of 22 essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author looks to a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy to read and re-read familiar stories, objects, symbols, and myths.

Welcome to Foo -- a fantastic realm that allows mankind to hope, imagine, and dream. "There are many kinds of secrets, but all secrets are much more interesting if whispered. And if that whispered secret is a haunting, life-altering one that has to hunt you down, than all the better." -- Obert...

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.

Laura Kasinof studied Arabic in college and moved to Yemen a few years later - after a friend at a late-night party in Washington, DC, recommended the country as a good place to work as a freelance journalist. When she first moved to Sanaa in 2009, she was the only American reporter based in the country. She quickly fell in love with Yemen’s people and culture, in addition to finding herself the star of a local TV soap opera.

The author of The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS and The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran returns with the sharp wit and boundless courage needed to expose the oncoming storm from Iran.

“A valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions—not to mention the president and his advisers—could benefit from reading.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times An examination of a world increasingly defined by disorder and a United...

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.

Combat veteran and author Hans Halberstadt takes listeners deeper inside the elusive world of snipers than ever before, from recruitment and training to the brutality of the killing fields. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how snipers think and interact with each other, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet finally strikes its target.

There are only a few hundred snipers from all the services put together in combat at any one time, making this true inside story a rare and important event.

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.

In the wake of a destructive tornado, one girl develops feelings for another in this stunning, tender novel about emerging identity, perfect for fans of The Thing About Jellyfish. When a tornado rips through town, twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen's house is destroyed and her family of five is...

In this delightfully imaginative novel, once again, hell threatens to break loose as Samuel Johnson and his ragtag group of friends must defend their town from shadowy forces more threatening than ever before... In this clever and quirky follow-up to The Gates and The Infernals, Samuel Johnson's...

A shocking act of terror brings the Middle East to the point of explosion. As the resulting political conflict threatens to erupt, a young Jewish American lawyer joins the defense team of an arrested but possibly innocent Palestinian. Soon the lawyer's father, a famed criminal attorney, must win the Palestinian's case or risk losing his daughter forever. To do so, he must take into account the tormented history of the Holy Land from every possible angle.

From award-winning author Beth Vrabel comes a powerfully moving story about a magical friendship, coping with disability, and the pains of growing up and growing apart. Twelve-year-old Caleb is shorter, frailer, and more protected than most kids his age. That's because he has cystic fibrosis, a...

عالم المازني الساحر الذي ينفتح للقارئ كنافذة تطل على الحياة بألوانها المختلفة، فيه يسرد الكاتب حكاياته وتأملاته بأسلوب ساخر لا يخلو من الحكمة. يجمع بين الطرفة والنقد، بين الذكرى والحلم، كأنما يريد أن يجعل من هذه الصفحات مرآة تعكس عبث الدنيا وجديتها معًا.

Naguib El-Samadouni has a significant advantage: he's boring. Boring people are everywhere around us; finding one is as easy as looking in the bathroom mirror or opening the window and looking out at the street. But Naguib is boring to an exciting degree... to a fascinating, ever-renewing degree.

ثمة تراثٌ أثري فريد من نوعه يلخّص فترات الحضارات المتعاقبة على الإمارات، وكيف امتلك الإنسان القديم فنّاً راقياً في التواصل مع الطبيعة وثقافة مهيبة ربما استفادها من حضارات أخرى بحكم التنقل والترحال، ولا شك أن النقوش الصخرية كشفت عن نبوغ ذلك الإنسان، كما امتلكت الجبال المنعزلة كجبل حفيت والبحايص والفاية وجبل مليحة مقومات الحياة كاملة قبل آلاف السنين. هذا الكتاب نتاج تأمّل داخل أفلاك الحجر والصحراء والماء والذات، يأخذك في رحلة بحث سرد حكائي أنثروبولوجي استقصائي إلى جماليات المكان الإماراتي منذ أزمنة التكوين البيئي، وإلى خيال الإنسان القديم الذي أصغى وانغمس في جوهر المخلوقات، وخلق تفاهماً ضمنياً فنياً مع طبيعتها وأجسادها.

Lara Marlowe first met Robert Fisk in 1983, in Damascus. He was already a famous war correspondent; she was a young American reporter who would soon become a renowned journalist in her own right. This is at once a portrait of a remarkable man by a woman who loved him, the story of a Middle East broken by its own divisions and outside powers and a moving account of a relationship in dark times.

Join the Kidds on their trek to exotic Russia and the dangerous Arctic as they outrun the bad guys in their search for stolen treasure. After their adventures in China and Germany, the Kidd family is ready for some rest and relaxation. But when you're an ace treasure hunting team, there's always...

When Europe's Great War engulfed the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists rose in revolt against the Turks. The British supported the Arabs' fight for an independent state and sent an intelligence officer, T. E. Lawrence, to join Prince Faisal, leader of the Arab army and a descendant of the Prophet. In October 1918, Faisal, Lawrence, and the Arabs victoriously entered Damascus, where they declared a constitutional government in an independent Greater Syria. At the Paris Peace Conference, Faisal won the support of President Woodrow Wilson.

"مرحبًا بكم .. أنغام ( شوبرت ) تنبعث من جهاز الكاسيت العملاق .. قدح من الشيكولاتـة الساخنة .. هدوء تام هذه الليلة كأن الصاخبين قد ماتوا كما تمنيت .. لا سعال .. لا صـداع .. رائحة عطرة تنبعث من عـود بخور رفيـع تنقل لـك أجـواء المعابـد البوذية فى ( التبت ) .. الرائحة تمتزج بأنغام ( شوبرت ) صانعة مزيجًا شميًّا ــ سمعيًّا فريدًا .. أى أنك قد تصغى لرائحة البخور أو تشم الموسيقا ..".