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

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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 : $16.00 Buy	One Country A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse Ali Abunimah Picador "A provocative and well-written account attacking the same failure of imagination that delivered to the world the present Arab-Israeli calamity."—Clayton E. Swisher, Middle East Policy

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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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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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Pakistan

Deep Inside the World's Most Frightening State

Mary Anne Weaver; With a New Introduction and Afterword Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

No nation is more critical to U.S. foreign policy than nuclear-armed Pakistan. Wedged between India and Afghanistan, it is the second largest country in the...

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A Peace to End All Peace, 20th Anniversary Edition

The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

David Fromkin Holt Paperbacks

"One of the first books to take an effective panoramic view of what was happening, not only in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and the Arab regions of Asia but also in Afghanistan and central Asia . . . Readers will come away from A Peace to End All Peace not only enlightened but challenged—challenged in a way that is brought home by the irony of the title."—The New York Times Book Review

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The Photographer

Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders

Emmanuel Guibert First Second

"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

ALA Notable Books - Winner
YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens
Barnes & Noble Best Graphic Novel
Shelf Awareness Best of the Year
Washington Post Best Books of the Year
Amazon.com Best Graphic Novel of the Year
Eisner Award Winner
Booklist Top Ten Graphic Novel
Library Media Connection Best of the Best
School Library Journal Best Adult Book for High School Students
Texas Maverick Graphic Novels List

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Trade Paperback : $15.00 Buy	The Poet Game A Novel Salar Abdoh Picador In the wake of the first World Trade Center bombing, New York City is the center of an intricate web of betrayals and double-crosses in the shadowy world of...

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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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Reset

Iran, Turkey, and America's Future

Stephen Kinzer St. Martin's Griffin

"In Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, [Kinzer] proposes a radical new course for the United States in the region. The United States, he argues, needs to partner with Iran and Turkey to create a 'powerful triangle' whose activities would promote a culture of democracy and combat extremism . . . Kinzer's U.S.-lranian-Turkish alliance is a longterm project, and the idea has ample grounding in the modern history of the region. Unlike other Muslim countries there, Kinzer shows, Iran and Turkey have at least a century's worth of experience struggling for political freedom . . . [and] share some fundamental values with the United States."—Foreign Affairs

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Trade Paperback : $17.00 Buy	Resource Wars The New Landscape of Global Conflict Michael T. Klare A Metropolitan/Holt Paperbacks Book "Brilliantly researched, ably argued . . . Resource Wars shows a new geography of conflict based on looming scarcities. Klare's analysis is indisputable."—David Rieff, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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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A Season in Mecca

Narrative of a Pilgrimage

Abdellah Hammoudi; Translated from the French by Pascale Ghazaleh Hill and Wang

Winner of the Lettre Ulysses Award

"These observations offer readers an intimate, insider's account of the minutiae of a hajj, particularly intriguing for those of us who will never be able to come any closer."—Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor

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Trade Paperback : $18.00 Buy	See Under: LOVE A Novel David Grossman; Translated by Betsy Rosenberg Picador In this powerful novel by one of Israel’s most prominent writers, Momik, the only child of Holocaust survivors, grows up in the shadow of his...

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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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A Shameful Act

The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility

Taner Akcam Picador

"Turkish historian Akçam capably refutes those who deny the Armenian genocide, who will probably not change their minds. No one knows how many Armenians died at Turkish hands in the 1910s, but the number almost certainly exceeds one million. Akçam, writing from the safe distance of the University of Minnesota, has worked through thousands and thousands of documents to find concrete evidence thereof, against considerable difficulty . . . Of profound importance to history—and certain to stir up nests of hornets."—Kirkus Reviews

Trade Paperback : $18.00 Buy	Sleeping on a Wire Conversations with Palestinians in Israel With a New Afterword; David Grossman; Translated by Haim Watzman Picador “No other Israeli writer so far has approached this touchy subject with such compassion, or looked at it with, so to speak, bifocal eyes, Israeli and Palestinian.”—Amos Elon, The New York Review of Books

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Someone to Run With

A Novel

David Grossman; Translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz Picador

"Beautiful and arresting . . . Like the best fables, Someone to Run With hoists the reader into a world larger and more luminous than any found outside the book. Grossman has created a place of great dangers and improbable strokes of fortune, of compelling suspense and love's labor gained."—Los Angeles Times

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The Spiders of Allah

Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War

James Hider St. Martin's Griffin

“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

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Taking Back Islam

American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith

Edited by Michael Wolfe and the Producers of Beliefnet Rodale Books

Winner of the Wilbur Award for Best Religion Book

"This intelligent, thoughtful collection of writings from dozens of contributors is the thinking person's guide to Islam in a post-9/11 America. It is only fitting that a major world religion be represented by multiple voices. Wolfe gathers excerpts from postings to the Beliefnet Web site, as well as brief essays from established authorities such as Karen Armstrong, practitioners like Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and new voices such as Asma Hasan and Aasma Khan . . . The book works well for both Muslim and non-Muslim readers. It is both an exploration of contemporary Islam (Has it been hijacked by extremists? Is it violent? Can Islamic states be democratic?) and a call for Muslims to reclaim their faith by mobilizing the moderate, seemingly silent, majority . . . An eye-opening survey of the minds and passions of progressive Muslims in the United States [that] offers hope for greater interfaith understanding."—Publishers Weekly

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Trade Paperback : $16.95 Buy	Thieves of Baghdad One Marine's Passion to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures Matthew Bogdanos and William Patrick Bloomsbury USA Thieves of Baghdad is a riveting account of Colonel Matthew Bogdanos and his team’s extraordinary efforts to recover over 5,000 priceless antiquities stolen...

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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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Trickster Travels

A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds

Natalie Zemon Davis Hill and Wang

"The first comprehensive reconstruction of al-Wazzan's life. Drawing on archival material and the accounts of contemporaries, the distinguished historian and author of The Return of Martin Guerre gives a fresh interpretation of The Description of Africa and al-Wazzan that grounds him in the 16th-century world through which he traveled . . . Davis beautifully renders the chapters of al-Wazzan's life."—Los Angeles Times

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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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