New Middle East

In the second edition of The New Middle East, renowned scholar James L. Gelvin explains how in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, the American invasion of Iraq, and the Arab uprisings of 2010-11, a new Middle East has emerged. Syria, Libya, and Yemen have become "crisis states," where warlords vie against governments and each other. The economies of Iran, Turkey, and Lebanon, weakened by corruption, sanctions, and neoliberal economic policies, have imploded. Some states have doubled-down on repression, while others intervene in the internal affairs of their neighbors with impunity.

When Jamie Maslin decides to hitchhike the entire length of the Silk Road, he decides to travel first and plan later. Then, unexpectedly stranded in Iran - a country he's only read about in newspapers - he wonders whether he'll make it out alive. After crossing the border on foot from Turkey, Maslin finds himself suddenly plunged into the subversive, contradictory world of Iranian subculture, where he is embraced by locals who are happy to show him the true Iran as they see it....

Dr Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist, specialising in forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now more than 1,000 years old, she can determine childhood diet and thereby where a person was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years. And her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking culture.

The prison at Abu Ghraib was still a relatively unknown part of America's War on Terror when - with no special training and their gear lost somewhere between the United States and Baghdad - the 152nd Field Artillery Battalion of the Maine National Guard was sent there to serve as guards in February 2004. Just before their arrival, the now infamous photos of the abuses suffered by the prisoners hit the world stage. Abu Ghraib became the focal point not only for global condemnation, but for the insurgents' outrage.

Ten years after an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, cries of "Benghazi!" still echo across America. But instead of a landmark event to be taken seriously, it has become a punchline, an empty word, or a code for controversy and political theatre. In this thrilling retelling, Ethan Chorin reveals Benghazi as a watershed moment in American history, one that helped create the world America lives in today: polarized, fearful, and dangerously unstable.

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.

Fallujah. Few names conjure up as many images of blood, sacrifice, and valor as does this ancient city in Al Anbar province 40 miles west of Baghdad. This sprawling concrete jungle was the scene of two major US combat operations in 2004. The first was Operation Vigilant Resolve, an aborted effort that April by US Marines intent on punishing the city’s insurgents. The second, Operation Phantom Fury, was launched seven months later. Richard Lowry’s New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah is the first comprehensive history of this fighting.

Barely a year after the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in Tunisia, a vast wave of popular protest has convulsed the Middle East, overthrowing long-ruling dictators and transforming the region’s politics almost beyond recognition. But the biggest transformations of what has been labeled as the “Arab Spring” are yet to come. An insider to both American policy and the world of the Arab public, Marc Lynch shows that the fall of particular leaders is but the least of the changes that will emerge from months of unrest.

Mimi is not thrilled to be spending her summer in Karachi, Pakistan, with grandparents she’s never met. Secretly, she wishes to find her long-absent father, and plans to write to him in her beautiful new journal. The cook's daughter, Sakina, still hasn't told her parents that she'll be accepted to school only if she can improve her English test score - but then, how could her family possibly afford to lose the money she earns working with her Abba in a rich family's kitchen?

In 1958 a young Bible scholar stumbles upon a version of the Gospel of Mark far older than that recorded in the New Testament. Unfortunately, his discovery brings him nothing but vilification and accusations of forgery. Eventually, the secret gospel simply disappears. Fifty-one years later, the scholar is dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack. However, evidence found in his room, coupled with a letter to Cairo-based journalist Alex Fisher, suggests murder.

In 2015, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin warned that the country’s citizens were dividing into tribes: by class and ethnicity, by geography, and along lines of faith. In Twelve Tribes, award-winning author Ethan Michaeli portrays this increasingly fractured nation by intertwining interviews with Israelis of all tribes into a narrative of social and political change.

From the depopulation of Julfa to the birth of New Julfa, these Armenians experienced destruction, exodus, and sanctuary. Shah Abbas force marches the Armenians out of old Julfa into Persia. They suffer greatly on the journey, but the Shah builds them a new city New Julfa, where they experience great wealth and peace. But then, oppression returns.

Ready for the Rapture presents a powerful and inspiring in-depth study of two of the most important and revelatory books of the Bible with respect to end-time events or eschatology in theological terms - first and second Thessalonians. While from a theological perspective this two-part volume is an exegetical treatise of these two vital New Testament books, it is masterfully narrated in a way that makes the Pauline letters' doctrine-rich content readily understandable and intriguing to listeners with as little as an elementary education.

¡Es el primer día de clases de Rashin en Estados Unidos! Todo tiene diferentes formas de lo que está acostumbrada, desde las comidas en su desayuno hasta las letras en sus libros ¡Y las familias de sus compañeros vienen de todos los rincones del mundo! La nueva maestra le pide a cada estudiante que se imagine la forma de su hogar en un mapa. Rashin sabe qué dirá de inmediato ¡Irán tiene forma de gato! ¿Qué irán a decir los otros niños? ¿Y qué hay del país de donde viene TU familia?

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?

It was a Roman historian and writer, St. Augustine, who coined the phrase "City of God" in a book of the very same title. But the city of God that Augustine was referring to was not in Jerusalem. When Augustine wrote his book, it was hundreds of years after the Jewish city of Jerusalem had been overrun and destroyed by the Roman legions; he was writing of Rome as the city of God and the center of the Roman Catholic faith.