Middle East War

Maajid Nawaz spent his teenage years listening to American hip-hop and learning about the radical Islamist movement spreading throughout Europe and Asia in the 1980s and '90s. At 16, he was already a ranking member in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a London-based Islamist group. He quickly rose through the ranks to become a top recruiter, a charismatic spokesman for the cause of uniting Islam's political power across the world.

May 6, 1986: Nick Popaditch arrives at the Receiving Barracks, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. April 9, 2003: An AP photographer captures a striking image seen around the world of the Gunny Sergeant smoking a victory cigar in his tank, the haunting statue of Saddam Hussein hovering in the background. Popaditch is immortalized forever as "The Cigar Marine."

The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey's interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops.

In "How Designers Think," Bryan Lawson described several traps in the design process. One of these, the image trap, is when a designer visualizes a design but fails to realize it does not match reality. Lack of experience, bias, or assumptions can mislead a designer. As a result, they do not examine their ideas with a critical eye. Over time, however, as the design process proceeds, the designer often realizes that what they envisioned is not possible under the current conditions or available resources. For example, in the years preceding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel’s military and ...

In this revealing journey through Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza itself, longtime journalist Mark Patinkin explores one of the world’s most divisive conflicts, capturing the stories of both sides in “The Holy Land at War.” He saw where Oct. 7 unfolded, and later witnessed Palestinian hardship - and hospitality - in Ramallah and Bethlehem. He traveled through the now dystopian landscape inside the war zone, spoke with wounded IDF soldiers, the parents of Israeli hostages, and heard the words of everyday Palestinians struggling to survive in Gaza.

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.

Surge is an insider's view of the most decisive phase of the Iraq War. Using newly declassified documents, unpublished manuscripts, interviews, author notes, and published sources, Surge explains how President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Ambassador Crocker, General Petraeus, and other U.S. and Iraqi political and military leaders shaped the surge from the center of the maelstrom in Baghdad and Washington.

On August 1, 1990, Flight 149 was scheduled for its routine London-to-Kuala Lumpur run. But when the plane, carrying 385 passengers and crew, landed at a Kuwait airport to refuel that day, it was surrounded by Iraqi tanks and about to be bombed by fighter jets. The passengers and crew were kept as hostages and suffered brutal treatment including violent attacks, sexual assaults, and mock executions.

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

PREVAILED: Donald Trump’s 2024 Victory makes a compelling read right from the opening chapters, as it encapsulates the political journey of Donald Trump in an insightful and electrifying manner. The author takes the reader hand-in-hand through the 45th president of the United States of America's journey to become the 47th president in a process that seems to defy lawsuits, assassination attempts, the machinery of the legacy media, the political establishment, and the “Powers without a Face”. Defying propaganda, staying indifferent to opinions not based on facts, ignoring outright lies...

"America had a secret weapon," writes Steve Call of the period immediately following September 11, 2001, as planners contemplated the invasion of Afghanistan. This weapon consisted of small teams of Special Forces operatives trained in close air support (CAS) who, in cooperation with the loose federation of Afghan rebels opposed to the Taliban regime, soon began achieving impressive - and unexpected - military victories over Taliban forces and the al-Qaeda terrorists they had sponsored....

New York Times bestselling coauthors of Under Fire tell the story of CIA Station Chief William Buckley and the beginning of the CIA’s war against Islamic radicalism.

The countdown has begun. Iran stands mere weeks from possessing a nuclear arsenal, its most advanced centrifuges spinning relentlessly in deeply buried, mountain fortresses, and its weaponization program at the shadowy "Rainbow" facility nearing completion. For Israel, the red line has been crossed, the specter of a second Holocaust looming. With the world paralyzed by indecision, Prime Minister Gideon Eshel unleashes the "Samson Gambit"—a breathtakingly audacious, multi-domain assault designed to cripple Iran's nuclear dream and decapitate its fanatical leadership in a single, ...

In 21 Days to Baghdad, historian Dr. Heather Stur describes the commitment of the division to Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq and the three weeks of violent desert conflicts on the way to Baghdad before the siege and battle for the city itself, and the “thunder runs” that saw its fall to U.S. forces. She then details the complex security mission that required the soldiers and their commanders to convince Iraqi citizens that the U.S. was there to help them, while at the same time they continued fighting Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, paramilitary forces, and terrorists.

On the night of September 11, 2012, the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, Libya, came under ferocious attack by a heavily armed group of Islamic terrorists. The prolonged firefight, and the attack hours later on a nearby CIA outpost, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, the Information Officer, Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

As a 23-year veteran of the United States Navy SEAL Teams, Ryan Zinke received two Bronze Stars for battle valor and eventually rose to command the elite members of SEAL Team Six. During his career Zinke trained and commanded many of the men who would one day run the covert operations to hunt down Osama bin Laden and save Captain Phillips ( Maersk Alabama). He also served as mentor to now famous SEALs Marcus Luttrell ( Lone Survivor) and Chris Kyle ( American Sniper).

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.

In early June 1967, the Israelis captured Jordanian intelligence that indicated an invasion was imminent, and at 08h10 on June 5, 1967, the Israel Broadcasting Authority aired an Israeli Defense Force communique. "Since the early hours of this morning", it read, "heavy fighting has been taking place on the southern front between Egyptian armored and aerial forces, which moved against Israel, and our forces, which went into action to check them."

Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group.