Middle World

Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the 16th century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces listeners to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society - from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings listeners through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

This book continues the story of the Fatimids from their newly founded capital of Cairo. Introducing the figures who moulded the empire, Shainool Jiwa charts the expansion of the Fatimids, the reasons behind their ultimate fall by the hand of Saladin, and the legacy that continues with the living Ismaili communities today.

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.

Until Scandinavia converted to Christianity and came under the rule of powerful kings, the Vikings were a dominant force in the medieval world. Outfitted with wind-powered sailing ships, they left their mark, spreading terror across Europe, sacking cities, deposing kings, and ransacking economies. But as much as we know about this culture, there is a large missing piece: its women. In this revisionist portrait, science journalist Heather Pringle turns those assumptions on their head, using the latest archaeological research and historical findings to reveal this group as they actually were.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The twentieth anniversary edition of the classic story of an incredible group of students and the teacher who inspired them, featuring updates on the students’ lives, new journal entries, and an introduction by Erin Gruwell Now a public television documentary...

From a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on Middle Eastern conflict comes a riveting biography of Meir Dagan, the legendary Mossad director who transformed Israel’s intelligence service into a global powerhouse of espionage and counterterrorism. In The Architect of Espionage...

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

The Last Prophet is a novel based on the extraordinary life of the prophet Muhammad, one-time shepherd and outcast revolutionary. This desert master’s discipline and principles would later become the basis for Islam, which today claims two billion followers.

In this New York Times bestselling memoir, Malala Yousafzai—the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—inspires young readers with her stunning story of resilience and power. I Am Malala. This is my story. Malala Yousafzai was only ten years old when the Taliban took control of her region...

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study. The author begins with the outward aspects of the teaching most likely to puzzle the student coming fresh to the subject. He considers various attitudes to Sufi ideas and evidence of their absorption into medieval Christianity, Hinduism, Jewish mysticism, and modern philosophical teachings.

The death toll in Gaza continues to rise―a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism. What remains of the theories we use to understand our world? With lyrical and lucid fury, Hamid Dabashi exposes the racist roots of Western philosophy, demanding that listeners overcome its pernicious phantom of relevance. Rather than perceiving "the West" as giving carte blanche to Israel, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as its quintessence.

Gass’ new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a life - futile, comic, anarchic - arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C. It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland....

In September 1984, Lisa Paul, an American college student and nanny living in Moscow, entered Inna Meiman’s house for her first Russian language lesson. And so began a two–year friendship and a fight for Inna’s life. In Swimming in the Daylight, Lisa chronicles her friend’s struggle to shed her refusenik status, obtain a visa to America, and find medical treatment for her malignant cancer. Inna endured a perverse reality as a citizen of the Soviet Union....

Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan M. Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel. In this audiobook, he presents an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence. Dershowitz takes a close look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country. He accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry and backs up his argument with hard facts.

It’s Rashin’s first day of school in America! Everything is a different shape than what she’s used to: from the foods on her breakfast plate to the letters in the books! And the kids’ families are from all over! The new teacher asks each child to imagine the shape of home on a map. Rashin knows right away what she’ll say: Iran looks like a cat! What will the other kids say?

She’s 43 years old…and starting over from scratch. How did this happen? She had it all together. A stable marriage of two decades. Two grown daughters. And now she and her husband, empty nesters, were moving to a beach house. Until he showed up late one night and tore their marriage apart. A secret life. A different woman. Another family. Left alone, she has to begin again. And then her estranged sister and mother get thrown into the mix. When she buys a house on a small South Carolina island, will she learn what life is really about?

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.

He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus' classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: He gives his brother a story and a name - Musa - and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.