Middle World

In No Mission Is Impossible, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal return with the intensely absorbing, fast-paced story of 30 of the boldest missions of the Israeli special forces. Bar-Zohar and Mishal depict in electrifying detail major battles, raids in enemy territory, and death-defying commando missions while also sharing the personal stories of both soldiers and top commanders, revealing their hopes and fears. The stories are often of victories, but sometimes they're of immense failures.

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.

The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus for most of the 20th century lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya.

Dixie has a boyfriend, and she's hiding him from everybody. William gets a job offer and has a big decision to make. Dawson has a huge announcement. Colleen gets the shock of her life. Julie adjusts to being a grandmother. Meg and Christian start building a life together. Someone unexpected comes to town and decides not to leave.

Mahmoud’s passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness.

The Sumerians settled in the area known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, around 5,000 years ago. They produced many fundamental changes to the way in which human societies developed - these were the first city-builders, the first people to use wheeled vehicles, the first methodical astronomers, and the first people to develop a sophisticated written language. The Sumerians also produced art, music, and literature as well as created some of the first professional soldiers the world had ever seen.

Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, edited by Refaat Alareer, is a compelling collection of short stories from 15 young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel's siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel's 2008-2009 offensive known as Operation Cast Lead, have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing.

In the summer of 2001, 12-year-old Fadi's parents make the difficult decision to illegally leave Afghanistan and move the family to the United States. When their underground transport arrives at the rendezvous point, chaos ensues, and Fadi is left dragging his younger sister, Mariam, through the crush of people. But Mariam accidentally lets go of his hand and becomes lost in the crowd, just as Fadi is snatched up into the truck. With Taliban soldiers closing in, the truck speeds away, leaving Mariam behind.

Learn how the life of this Lebanese immigrant has positioned him to artistically capture the hearts, minds, and souls of readers for generations, making him one of the world’s best-selling poets. In the collected works of poetry, poet, author, artist, and philosopher, Kahlil Gibran, shares his spiritual and moral views of life, purpose, love, and pain.

The Last Kingdom is one of the most successful historical fiction series of our time. The novels tell the epic story of the birth of England and introduces one of the greatest ever fictional heroes: the iconic Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the Saxon-born, Norse-raised warrior and rebel. In this lively compendium, Bernard Cornwell revisits Uhtred’s realm, illuminating elements of the Anglo-Saxon world he couldn’t fully explore in his novels.

A three part treatise on Democracy, Economics, and Social Relationships.

Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.

Steven A. Cook charts the course of the United States' encounter with the Middle East from the mid-twentieth century through the present day. Looking back, Cook makes a bold claim: the US was—despite setbacks and moral costs—successful. That record of achievement began to unravel in the early 1990s when policymakers embarked upon a set of overly ambitious policies to remake the Middle East. Cook highlights that calls to withdraw from the region are rash given the important interests the US maintains in the region.

SYRIA, IRAQ, ISIS, ISRAEL & BIBLICAL PROPHECIES A TIMELY APPEARANCE AGAIN! You will surely not be disappointed with this small book if you are interested in knowing at what point of time the world is standing right now. Not only that, its systematic exposition of the biblical prophecies is quite startling in its revelation of the meaning of what is happening right now in the Middle East, and what future events are closely following it. If you learn about it, it is simply not possible that you do not start preparing for what is soon to come. SURE THING! Bertrand sounds extremely convincing ...

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.

Once upon a time an Indian writer name Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some 700 years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with 20th-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.

Benjamin Netanyahu is embroiled in numerous scandals, all of his own making, and may soon be ousted from the office he has held longer than any prior Israeli prime minister outside of David Ben Gurion. But Bibi, as he is known by friend and foe alike, is no stranger to controversy. For many in Israel and elsewhere, he is an embarrassment, a threat to democracy, even a precursor to Donald Trump. He nevertheless continues to dominate Israeli public life - and he may yet survive his current crises, the most challenging of his career.

Ancient Egypt wasn't all pyramids, sphinxes and gold sarcophagi. For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra.

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.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today. On visits to the great cities of Europe, Thomas Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world.