Middle East Politics

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States.

Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also has an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors - the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan - every day.

Bernard Lewis examines the historical roots of the frustrations and resentments that dominate the Islamic world today and that are increasingly being expressed in acts of terrorism. He looks at the theological origins of political Islam and tells us what the Islamic doctrine of jihad has meant at different times in history.

In Two Nations Under God, Tom Doyle presents reasons why the U.S. should show concern for Israel. In three parts, Doyle explains the history of Israel, why it affects us, and how to help through prayer. Best of all, readers will learn throughout that, despite the headlines, there is plenty of good news coming from the Middle East. Doyle reports on the increasing number of Muslims converting to Christianity, profiles local disciples and church planters, and provides helpful timelines, comparison charts, photographs, and more to keep every detail concerning Israel in perspective.

The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the belief that the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002.

In the secret world of spies and covert operations, no other intelligence service continues to be surrounded by myth and mystery as does the Mossad. Created in 1951 to ensure the future of an embattled Israel, Mossad is responsible for the most audacious and thrilling feats of espionage, counterterrorism, and assassination. To some, Mossad is the precise and at times lethal instrument of Israel's will, a fiercely dedicated group of men and women: an elite intelligence arm.

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.

From Graeme Wood comes the definitive book on the history, psychology, character and aims of the Islamic State. Based on Wood's unprecedented access to supporters, recruiters and high-ranking members of the most infamous jihadist group in the world, The Way of the Strangers is a riveting, fast-paced deep dive into the apocalyptic dogma that informs the group's worldview, from the ideas that motivate it to the 'fatwa factory' that produces its laws to its very specific plans for the future.

What are the roots of radicalism? Journalist Carla Power came to this question well before the January 6, 2021, attack in Washington, DC, turned our country’s attention to the problem of domestic radicalization. Her entry point was a different wave of radical panic - the way populists and pundits encouraged us to see the young people who joined ISIS or other terrorist organizations as simple monsters. Power wanted to chip away at the stereotypes by focusing not on what these young people had done but why.

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.

In wide-ranging interviews with David Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks listeners to consider "the world we are leaving to our grandchildren": one imperiled by the escalation of climate change and the growing potential for nuclear war. If the current system is incapable of dealing with these threats, he argues, it's up to us to radically change it.

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin remains the single most consequential event in Israel's recent history and one that fundamentally altered the trajectory for both Israel and the Palestinians. Killing a King relates the parallel stories of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would lead to peace - and the other plotted murder.

The clash between Israel and Palestine has been one of the most emotionally engaging causes of modern times. Prophets Without Honor tells the story of the attempts to solve the conflict and examines the reasons for its resilience. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who participated at a high level in the July 2000 Camp David peace talks that almost led to a historic deal, uses his insider experience to illuminate the specific factors that impede a solution to the conflict.

A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today's most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence and a host of illustrious writers to tell the stories of the people on the ground in the contested territories.

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.

The untold story of an Israeli spy’s epic journey to bring the notorious Butcher of Latvia to justice - a case that altered the fates of all ex-Nazis.

On March 21, 1968, Yasir Arafat and his guerrillas made the fateful decision to break with conventional guerrilla tactics, choosing to stand and fight an Israeli attack on the al-Karama refugee camp in Jordan. They suffered terrible casualties, but they won a stunning symbolic victory that transformed Arafat into an Arab hero and allowed him to launch a worldwide campaign, one that would reshape Cold War diplomacy and revolutionary movements everywhere. In The Global Offensive, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin offers new insights into the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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 this vivid history, master storyteller and world-renowned historian Juan Cole tells the story of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. Revealing Napoleon's reasons for leading the expedition against Egypt and showcasing the young general's fascinating views of the Orient, Cole delves into the psychology of both the military titan and his entourage.