"Few communities are simultaneously as important and as poorly understood as the Muslims of the United States. Eye-opening, penetrating, and unfailingly honest, American Islam brings us deep into the lives of influential doers and thinkers across the spectrum of Muslim diversity. Paul Barrett's intelligence and keen eye for detail make the book a pleasure to read; his admirable balance in writing about controversial figures makes it a major contribution to the continuing debate about the future of Islam in the United States."—Noah Feldman, author of After Jihad and Divided by God

"[Yemen Chronicle] focuses on the themes of violence, honor, and hospitality in Arabic tribal society, and cultural misunderstandings and the efforts of a nonnative to be accepted in another culture . . . I highly recommend [Yemen Chronicle] to students of anthropology, Yemen, the Middle East, and anyone who has tried to live in a foreign culture."—David M. Witty, The Journal of Military History

"Elliot reports on the 'double life' of the Persians he meets, who unanimously denounce the ruling mullahs. One insists that you're nobody in Iran if you haven't been imprisoned; another rolls his eyes at the author's obsessive trawling of mosques, protesting, 'People will think I'm with a fanatic.' The book is replete with historical arcana . . . ruminations on the 'turbulent calligraphies' of Islamic architecture, and labyrinthine footnotes . . . Elliot is a travel writer of the old school: untethered to an itinerary, eager to be led astray, and as ardent an observer of the experience of traveling as of his destination."—The New Yorker

"[Grossman's] own son, Uri, dies on the last day before a truce in the Second Lebanon War, yet the author of See Under: Love and The Book of Intimate Grammar still resists bloody vengeance, still insists on humanity. Writing in the Dark, his latest collection of essays, ranges from 'Books That Have Read Me' (by Sholem Aleichem Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann) to 'Contemplations on Peace' (necessitating what 'acquired naïveté calls'), with sidelong looks at language in politics and what might be learned from the Other . . . Just listen to him."—John Leonard, Harper's Magazine

"It is impossible to know war if you do not stand with the mass of the powerless caught in its maw. All narratives of war told through the lens of the combatants carry with them the seduction of violence. But once you cross to the other side, to stand in fear with the helpless and the weak, you confront the moral depravity of industrial slaughter and the scourge that is war itself. Few books achieve this clarity. The Photographer is one. A strange book, part photojournalism and part graphic memoir, The Photographer tells the story of a small mission of mostly French doctors and nurses who traveled into northern Afghanistan by horse and donkey train in 1986, at the height of the Soviet occupation. The book shows the damage done to bodies and souls by shells, bullets and iron fragments, and the frantic struggle to mend the broken."—Chris Hedges, The New York Times

“Thank God (although after reading this book you might stop believing in a higher power) for James Hider.  After working as a reporter on all the major frontlines of the War on Terror, he has produced a masterpiece that strips away the propaganda and prejudice that blights analysis of the first global conflict of the 21st Century.  It is a work of great authority written with wit and wisdom.”—Tim Butcher, author of Blood River

"Readers can no longer pretend that Palestine is merely a fugitive state of mind, a convenient Arab myth, a traumatic tribal memory, and somebody else's problem. This remarkable novel out of Lebanon, a skillful reshuffling of the 1001 Nights with a doctor in a refugee camp playing the part of Scheherazade, fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads."—John Leonard, Harper's Magazine

Drawing on the traditions of Arabic storytelling, Elias Khoury's fable of displacement, first published in Arabic in 1981, follows a stranger as he arrives in a gated city and wanders through its labyrinthine streets in search of the city's future—and his own.

"How to tell the story of a city [Beirut] that has changed from the Switzerland of the East, to its Hong Kong, then its Saigon, and finally its Calcutta. [Elias Khoury] has succeeded, as only a great novelist can do."—Le Monde

“In Lebanon, there is passion and there is blood. Elias Khoury’s new novel, Yalo, heavy with both, is a dizzying journey into the extremes of human experience—into the intense sensuality and stomach-turning violence."—Adam LeBor, The New York Times Book Review

"Quil Lawrence, who has spent much of this decade reporting from Iraq for the BBC/PRI radio program The World, confesses to the power Kurdistan holds on him. The Kurds have clearly worked on his heart, and it shows in the way he tells the story of a people who have made themselves central not just to American plans in Iraq but also in the wider Middle East."—The New York Times Book Review

"Along comes Amin Maalouf with his lovely, complex memoir, Origins, to remind us that Arab identity is as fluid, unsettled and ever-changing as the Mediterranean Sea where it kisses the shores of Lebanon, his country of origin, and France, where he has lived for the last 30 years . . . Maalouf doesn’t only want to illuminate family history or amplify stories barely whispered for a hundred years; instead, he strives to reveal the fecund variety of his own family, of Arab life and history, of history itself. In doing so, he offers a lesson in the value of impermanence and shifting sands . . . Maalouf wants nothing more than to unwind the long scarf of memory and history, not to make a claim, but in celebration of human dignity, endeavor and 'wanderers who have lost their way.' He is one of that small handful of writers, like David Grossman and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who are indispensable to us in our current crisis."—Jonathan Wilson, The New York Times Book Review

“Mr. Nusseibeh’s very existence poses a challenge to many Israelis’ beliefs about themselves. But as Once Upon a Country, his fascinating and deeply intelligent memoir, makes clear, Mr. Nusseibeh is really an Israeli dream . . . Such refreshing self-deprecation—rare in Arab public writing—runs throughout this memoir, one of the best personal accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever written.”—Ethan Bronner, The New York Times