History Middle

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.

A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream - the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals - may die.

Throughout the Gulf War of 1991, unprecedented restrictions on the media’s access to the battlefield kept the true story of that brief, brutal conflict from being told. Now, after two years of intensive research, Rick Atkinson has written what will surely come to be recognized as the definitive chronicle of the war.

The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first “high-value target” captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was?

In 1948, Israel’s founders sought a “national home for the Jewish people,” where Jewish life would be transformed. The state they ultimately made, says Daniel Gordis, is a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering.

Yonah Bob and Ilan Evyatar describe how Israel has used cyberwarfare, targeted assassinations, and sabotage of Iranian facilities to great effect, sometimes in cooperation with the United States. Even as it takes lethal action, Israel has managed to alter the politics of the Middle East, culminating in the Abraham Accords of 2020. Arab states such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel, and the holy grail of normalization with Saudi Arabia may yet be achieved.

Historian Nigel Cliff delivers a sweeping, radical reinterpretation of Vasco da Gama's pioneering voyages, revealing their significance as a decisive turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam. Perfect for fans of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Galileo's Daughter, and Atlantic, this first-ever complete account of da Gama's voyages includes new information from the recently discovered diaries of his sailors and an extraordinary series of letters between da Gama and the Zamorin, a king of modern-day Kerala, India.

In 1921 a small group of self-appointed patriots set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They named their operation Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution. Over several years the men tracked down and assassinated former Turkish leaders. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told until now.

Sara Daniel, a star European correspondent and one of the few women reporters covering Iraq, dares to venture where few have gone, in this gripping and fascinating memoir. In June of 2002, war looms and Saddam Hussein still has a brutal grip on a nation in disarray. Sara Daniel travels the length and breadth of Iraq, following the fast-evolving events and interviewing people from all walks of life and all religious and political affiliations: from the Kurds in the north to the rising new politicians in Baghdad and beyond....

On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel’s operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation.

With Nazis bombing London every night, it's time for 13-year-old Ken to escape. He suspects his stepmother is glad to see him go, but his dad says he's one of the lucky ones - one of 90 boys and girls to ship out aboard the SS City of Benares to safety in Canada. Life aboard the luxury ship is grand-nine-course meals, new friends, and a life far from the bombs, rations, and his stepmum's glare. And after five days at sea, the ship's officers announce that they're out of danger. They're wrong.

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?

Lawrence Durrell's evocative memoir of living in Cyprus, just before the Greek/Turkish partition. This is a touching and atmospheric account of a place, now changed, where the two races lived side by side.

On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer - and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined.

A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Elizabeth Warnock Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. This volume gives a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.

Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas, and then they were erased from history. Wake tells the story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always said that enslaved women were not involved, but Rebecca decides to look deeper.

The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.

Best-selling author Robert Lacey tells us what happened in the Middle East's oil-rich powerhouse---while we weren't looking.

Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the 20th century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent - more than 1,000,000 people. A century later, the Armenian genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian versions of events.

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.