Trade Books for Courses :: Trade Books For Courses: Middle Eastern Studies Middle Eastern Studies Books

Trade Paperback : $18.00 Buy	The House of Wisdom How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury Press For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict....

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The Challenge

How a Maverick Navy Officer and a Young Law Professor Risked Their Careers to Defend the Constitution--and Won

Jonathan Mahler Picador

"[The Challenge] tells the story of a captive who gave his name to a great constitutional decision; and it describes the personal struggles of his lawyers, their courage, and their faults . . . A work of rare drama."—Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books

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The Trouble with Islam Today

A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith

Irshad Manji St. Martin's Griffin

"Feels like a revelation . . . a raw nerve ending for the West—shocking, raw, but mercifully, joyously, still alive."—Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Book Review

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Readers Guides

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The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire

Historical Endings

Justin McCarthy Bloomsbury USA

This book examines the collapse of the Ottoman Empire which changed the lives of Slavs, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, and Armenians. For six centuries the Ottoman Empire united a diverse array of religious and ethnic groups, but its dissolution into distinct states left a tradition of nationalism and ethnic enmity in much of the Balkans and Middle East which directly links to crises in the region today.

The new map of the Balkans and Middle East, which was largely the product of the victorious Allies after Word War I, made little concession to practical concerns such as access to seaports, or the rights of minorities. In particular the majority of the Muslim population of the Ottoman Balkans would never be integrated into the new states as the "national" character of these states depended, in part, on the elimination of what they considered "outsiders". Only the Turkish Republic was able to thwart the plans of the conquerors by defeating military incursion.

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A Question of Torture

CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror

American Empire Project

Alfred McCoy A Metropolitan/Holt Paperbacks Book

“An indispensable and riveting account” of the CIA’s development and use of torture, from the cold war to Abu Ghraib and beyond (Naomi Klein, The Nation) In...

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The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Political theorists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt show how the right to the pursuit of happiness presently enables foreign governments to exert adverse influence over foreign-policy questions of war and peace simply by coordinating the expression of private citizens' ostensible self-interest. Public-choice scholars and other curious individuals will relish the analysis and insights presented in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."—James A. Montanye, The Independent Review

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Human Cargo

A Journey Among Refugees

Caroline Moorehead Picador

"It is Moorehead's sensitivity to . . . historical circumstances and political contingencies—not to mention her considerable skills as a writer and storyteller—that makes her book such a vital contribution to debates over migration . . . She differs from those showy journalists of alarm who view the distress of others as an opportunity for overwrought prose and self-display . . . [S]he is devoted to the quiet narration of disquieting fact . . . If her brief is universal, her eye and ear are local, attuned and affixed to the toll of state policies and their historical context. Inevitably, she brings to mind the great Martha Gellhorn, the subject of her last biography, whose 'small, still voice' carried a 'barely contained fury and indignation at the injustice of fate and man against the poor, the weak, the dispossessed.'"—The Nation

ALA Notable Books - Winner - Nonfiction
National Books Critics Circle Awards - Nominee - Nonfiction

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Awards

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Death to the Dictator!

A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 Election and Pays a Devastating Price

Afsaneh Moqadam Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

Tehran, June 12, 2009. Mohsen Abbaspour, an ordinary young man in his twenties—not particularly political, or ambitious, or worldly—casts the first vote of his...

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Hardcover : $34.95 Buy	Baghdad Journal An Artist in Occupied Iraq Steve Mumford Drawn and Quarterly "Though contemporary American art often flirts with politics, it is not usually noted for its head-on engagement with war. Yet some of the most compelling commentary on Iraq has come from a New York painter, Steve Mumford."—The New York Times

Trade Paperback : $16.00 Buy	Fighting Terrorism How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists Benjamin Netanyahu Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks "An excellent primer on the groups, motives, and methods of the current terrorist threat."—Bill Gertz, The Washington Times

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Once Upon a Country

A Palestinian Life

Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David Picador

“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

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Trade Paperback : $17.00 Buy	Sea of Faith Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World Stephen O'Shea Walker & Company From the sixth through the sixteenth centuries, the faiths of Islam and Christianity contended for primacy in the Mediterranean world. At times acrimonious, at...

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The Assassins' Gate

America in Iraq

George Packer Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Packer provides page after page of vivid description of the haphazard, poorly planned and almost criminally executed occupation of Iraq. In reading him we see the staggering gap between abstract ideas and concrete reality."—Fareed Zakaria, The New York Times Book Review

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ALA Notable Books - Winner - Nonfiction
Helen Bernstein Book Award - Excellence in Journalism

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Betrayed

A Play

George Packer Faber and Faber, Inc.

"A Sunni who has worked for years as a translator for the Americans in Iraq, [Adnan] has been denied a visa to immigrate to the United States . . . His plight is one of three heart-rending tales woven together in Betrayed, a new play by George Packer about the suffering of Iraqis who have risked everything to help the American government and military in Iraq—and have, all too often, received insufficient protection in return. The play . . . explores its subject with a clean focus that draws out the emotional power of the material with clinical precision."—Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

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Seeds of Terror

How Drugs, Thugs, and Crime Are Reshaping the Afghan War

Gretchen Peters Picador

"What is clear from Ms. Peters' account is that there are people on both sides who have a large stake in making sure the Afghanistan conflict continues . . . Ms. Peters makes some excellent policy suggestions at the end of her book. She is sensitive to the situation of small Afghan farmers, who would be crushed by debt to traffickers if their crops were eradicated. Instead, she suggests that counternarcotics policy should be oriented toward netting the big traffickers, including, if necessary, the traffickers who work inside official government positions . . . In addition to these policies, Ms. Peters maintains that any counternarcotics strategy will fail without the accompaniment of classical counterinsurgency tactics: protecting the population and bringing insurgents into the political realm."—Ian Chesley, Far Eastern Economic Review

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We Just Want To Live Here

A Palestinian Teenager, an Israeli Teenager, An Unlikely Friendship

Amal Rifa'i and Odelia Ainbinder with Sylke Tempel St. Martin's Griffin

"The letters exchanged between Amal and Odelia are profoundly moving. The conflict between Jews and Arabs has been described in countless books and argued in unending polemics, but here, in the letters between these two eighteen-year-old women, an Arab and a Jew, is the heartbreaking essence of the quarrel. It is the battle of two rights; the Palestinians who have been made into semi-strangers in their homeland and the Jews who have no other place which is central to their history, and which is always ready to receive Jews in flights from persecution. In these letters (an idea brilliantly conceived and carried through by Sylke Tempel) Amal and Odelia educate each other. The conclude together that their two peoples cannot continue to make war. They must agree that the are destined, perhaps even condemned, to live together in the land, as first in two separate states and ultimately, in growing comradeship. This is the book for anyone who wants to feel and understand the emotions on both sides. It will become a classic."—Arthur Hertzberg, author of A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity

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Teachers Guides

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The Missing Peace

The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace

Dennis Ross Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

A New York Times Notable Book
Winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's Henry Adams Prize

"Ross tells the story well and with admirable objectivity . . . The book's greatest contribution is its detailed rendering of the story of the efforts to reach an Arab-Israeli settlement from 1988 to the end of 2000 . . . There is much to praise in this book."—William B. Quandt, Middle East Journal

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Footnotes in Gaza

A Graphic Novel

Joe Sacco Metropolitan Books

"Fascinating . . . the cartoonist is in top form throughout . . . A story soaked to the marrow with heartbreaking insights . . . One of the best long-form comics of this decade, and Sacco’s greatest work to date.”—The Comics Reporter

L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist
Eisner Award Winner

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What Do Muslims Believe?

The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam

Ziauddin Sardar Walker & Company

"Just over 100 pages of tightly formatted highlights of the history, significance and practice of the [faith] and concludes with suggestions for further study . . . well-indexed . . . offer[s] more than facts . . . In describing how Muslims are expected to follow the daily life practices of the Prophet by how they eat, dress, even clean their teeth, Sardar adds that among his followers, 'the Prophet's generosity and forgiveness, compassion and civility, his strong sense of justice and equality, his passion for thought and learning are often conspicuous by their absence.'"—Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today

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To Live or to Perish Forever

Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan

Nicholas Schmidle St. Martin's Griffin

“Nicholas Schmidle's portrait of Pakistan is worth more than a whole stack of intelligence reports. From remote Swat to teeming Karachi, he humanizes this labyrinthine country—where real danger has grown while the world focused elsewhere. Schmidle's blend of history and travelogue is by turns poignant and terrifying, but always relevant, always engaging, and more urgent now than ever.”—Nathaniel Fick, author of the New York Times bestseller One Bullet Away

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Counterstrike

The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker Times Books

Inside the Pentagon's secretive and revolutionary new strategy to fight terrorism--and its game-changing effects in the Middle East and at home In the years...

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Quick Facts about Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker

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One Palestine, Complete

Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

Tom Segev; Translated by Haim Watzman Picador

"The best single account of Palestine under the British mandate . . . This will doubtlessly become the authoritative text for the pre-state history of Israel."—Omer Bartov, The New York Times Book Review

National Jewish Book Award - Nominee - Nonfiction
National Jewish Book Award - Winner - Winner in both Jewish History and Israel categories

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Trade Paperback : $21.00 Buy	1949 The First Israelis With a New Preface by the Author; Tom Segev; Translated by Arlen N. Weinstein Picador The founding of Israel in 1948--one of the seminal events of the century--offers a heroic narrative with few parallels in modern history. In 1949, a...

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1967

Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

Tom Segev Picador

“A marvelous achievement . . . Anyone curious about the extraordinary six days of Arab-Israeli war will learn much from it.”—The Economist Tom Segev’s...

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