Showing titles in Middle East

David Kilcullen was one of the architects of America's strategy in the late phases of the second Gulf War, and also spent time in Afghanistan and other hotspots. In Blood Year, he provides a view of the current situation in the Middle East and analyzes how America and the West ended up in such dire circumstances. This is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding not only why the region has collapsed into utter chaos, but also what the US can do to alleviate the grim situation.

Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis....

As Syria imploded in civil war in 2011, Kurdish volunteers in the north rose up to free their homeland from centuries of repression and create a progressive sanctuary of tolerance and democracy. To the medievalists of ISIS, this was an affront, so they amassed 10,000 men, heavy artillery, tanks, mortars and ranks of suicide bombers to crush the uprising. Against them stood 2,500 volunteer fighters armed with 40-year-old rifles. There was only one way for the Kurds to survive. They would have to kill the invaders one by one.

Despite numerous warnings from intelligence services, ISIS' rise to power has left countries around the world floundering for solutions. Today we face a threat that is more violent, more powerful, and financially stronger than ever before. In this audiobook journalist Benjamin Hall will provide insights by answering the basic questions we still don't have the answers to: Who are they? Where did they come from? How are they so successful so quickly? How can they be stopped?

A Wall Street Journal national security reporter takes listeners into the lives of US Special Forces on the front lines against the Taliban and Islamic State, where a new and covert war is keeping Afghanistan from collapse.

Medea Benjamin researches the sinister nature of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. In seven succinct chapters followed by a meditation on prospects for change, Benjamin shines a light on one of the most perplexing elements of American foreign policy. Why, over a period of decades and across various presidential administrations, has the US consistently supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests?

On September 12th, 2012, Brandon Webb learned Glen Doherty, one of his closest friends and his former Navy SEAL teammate, was killed alongside Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two other Americans when the U.S. State Department and CIA headquarters in Benghazi, Libya, were sieged in a shocking terrorist attack.

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

After 9/11, the Ayn Rand Institute predicted that the prevailing ideas about morality would undercut our foreign policy and cripple us in action. In the op-eds, essays, blog posts, and interviews featured in this audiobook, you will hear that those predictions have proved correct. Can we end the Islamist menace and secure our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on earth? Yes - easily - if we adopt the right philosophic ideas to guide our foreign policy.

In a world that cries out for peace, which will prevail - Jesus or Jihad? Bible-believing Christians wonder: What does Islamic extremism mean in terms of Bible prophecy? Do today's turbulent events have prophetic significance? In Jesus, Jihad and Peace, Dr. Michael Youssef provides answers that are concise and biblically accurate, explaining how trends within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam fit into prophetic history.

New York Times best-selling author Seth Abramson’s explosive new audiobook, Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Threatens American Democracy, is a story of international intrigue whose massive cast of characters includes Israeli intelligence operatives, Russian oligarchs, Saudi death squads, American mercenary companies, Trump’s innermost circle, and several members of the Trump family as well as Trump 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.

Say the word Israel today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers' dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era.

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.

When Charif Majdalani begins to walk the streets of his city and to write down what he sees, the first hints of unrest within a vibrant culture creep to the fore. Majdalani's reportage through the months of 2020 bears witness to the ways in which an ancient civilisation slowly, then rapidly, descends into the abyss. Then, the unexpected, Beirut collapses under the explosive force of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. The blast kills hundreds and injures thousands. But through the rubble and the sirens, a people finds its strength to survive and its heart to unite.

Bigger than Watergate! Bigger than Iran-Contra! Ten times bigger than both, said one representative. The Bengahzi scandal may have been covered up by the White House, but the truth is about to come out. The Real Benghazi Story is a groundbreaking investigative work that finally exposes some of the most significant issues related to the murderous September 11, 2012, attack - information with current national security implications.

In Doomed to Succeed, Ross takes us through every administration from Truman to Obama, throwing into dramatic relief each president's attitudes toward Israel and the region, the often tumultuous debates between key advisers, and the events that drove the policies and at times led to a shift in approach.

Michael Oren served as the Israeli ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013. An American by birth and a historian by training, Oren arrived at his diplomatic post just as Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton assumed office. During Oren's tenure in office, Israel and America grappled with the Palestinian peace process, the Arab Spring, and existential threats to Israel posed by international terrorism and the Iranian nuclear program.

Dr. Wendy Elisheva Somerson, PhD, shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies—and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging. This unmetabolized trauma can lock us into a survival state that brings historical grief into the present moment…and keep us from exploring critical questions that help us tend our legacies and live into a better world.

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.