Middle East War

Afghanistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, has improbably been at the center of international geopolitics for four decades. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1980, Afghanistan descended into an unending conflict that featured at various points most of the world's major powers. In Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know, leading scholar Barnett R. Rubin provides an overview of this complicated nation. After providing a concise history of Afghanistan, he explores the various peoples and cultures of the country and its relations with neighbors like Pakistan and Iran.

The Jewish people are one of the oldest living people groups on the planet. The Jews lived alongside the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Sumerians - all of whom have since disappeared from the pages of history. Yet the Jews still remain. Despite all of the odds, Jewish culture, language, laws, and religion have remained intact over the course of thousands of years.

In this gripping blend of reportage, memoir, and analysis, a journalist and daughter of one of the world's most famous hostages, Terry Anderson, takes an intimate look at her father's captivity during the Lebanese Hostage Crisis and the ensuing political firestorm surrounding both her family and the United States - as well as the far-reaching implications of those events on Middle Eastern politics today.

A revelatory account of the cloak-and-dagger Israeli campaign to target the finances fueling terror organizations - an effort that became the blueprint for US efforts to combat threats like ISIS and drug cartels. ISIS boasted $2.4 billion of revenue in 2015, yet for too long the global war on terror overlooked financial warfare as an offensive strategy. "Harpoon", the creation of Mossad legend Meir Dagan, directed spies, soldiers, and attorneys to disrupt and destroy money pipelines and financial institutions that paid for the bloodshed.

For three millennia, the Mediterranean Sea served as the center of western civilization and the scene of many colossal wars and naval battles. In the early summer of 1940, this ancient body of water again played host to a new and extensive conflict as the Kingdom of Italy challenged Britain for dominance within the region. With France on the verge of collapse and Britain facing the prospect of imminent invasion, the Italians hoped to re-establish control over the Mediterranean.

Since its publication in 2003, the first edition of Black Garden has become the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, were pulled into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, spell the end the Soviet Union, and plunge a region of great strategic importance into a decade of turmoil. This important volume is both a careful reconstruction of the history of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting of the convoluted aftermath.

Burning Country explores the complicated reality of life in present-day Syria with unprecedented detail and sophistication, drawing on new first-hand testimonies from opposition fighters, exiles lost in an archipelago of refugee camps, and courageous human rights activists. Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami expertly interweave these stories with an incisive analysis of the militarization of the uprising, the rise of the Islamists and sectarian warfare, and the role of Syria’s government in exacerbating the brutalization of the conflict.

The Road to Fatima Gate is a first-person narrative account of revolution, terrorism, and war during history's violent return to Lebanon after 15 years of quiet. Michael J. Totten's version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world's most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.

In a 2010 terrorist plot, Al-Qaeda hid a bomb in a FedEx shipment addressed to Reynald de Chatillon, a knight who had died centuries ago in the Crusades. A reviled figure in Islamic history, often portrayed as the very epitome of brutality, Reynald remains as controversial - and as vividly present in the minds of many in the Middle East - as the story of the Crusades themselves.

Terrorism expert Erick Stakelbeck pulls back the curtain on ISIS, the violent terrorist organization spreading death and hate in the Middle East. The rise of ISIS took the White House by complete surprise: President Obama called the group "JV" then was forced to reassess when ISIS began executing innocent American journalists. Now radicalized Americans and Europeans are joining ISIS' ranks.

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Like no book before it, Preachers of Hate uncovered an ancient hatred that threatens the life and livelihood of every American. The “new” anti-Semitism targets not only Jews, but Americans specifically and the West in general. It targets our values, our lifestyle, and our freedoms. It is the single most important issue we face when trying to make sense of the Arab world.

In 1948, Stan Andrews left a comfortable postwar life in Los Angeles to travel to the war-torn Middle East, where a four-front Arab invasion threatened to destroy the newly-declared State of Israel. There he joined the Israeli Air Force and became one of its first fighter pilots. Andrews was an unexpected volunteer for the fight for a Jewish state. He had previously been aloof from the struggle for Jewish independence but found himself so roused by the anti-Semitism of 1940s America that he decided to go to Israel and risk everything.

Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS, none has given voice to the women in the organization; but women were essential to the establishment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. Responding to promises of female empowerment and social justice, and calls to aid the plight of fellow Muslims in Syria, thousands of women emigrated to join the Islamic State. Guest House for Young Widows charts the different ways women were recruited, inspired, or compelled to join the militants.

The destruction of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 was the greatest atrocity of World War I. Around one million Armenians were killed, and the survivors were scattered across the world. Although it is now a century old, the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years.

Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists, a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.

In 1798, an initial review of France’s naval forces had led Napoleon to conclude his navy could not hope to outfight the power of the Royal Navy, which had been the dominant naval power for centuries, so he was forced to look elsewhere. After months of planning, Napoleon crafted a scheme to attack and conquer Egypt, denying the British easy access to their colonies in India, with the ultimate goal of linking up with the Sultan Tipoo in India itself and defeating the British in the field there. Napoleon sailed with Admiral Brueys and 30,000 troops that June, heading for Egypt.

From the award-winning and acclaimed author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, From Warsaw with Love tells the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War. In 1990, soon after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who’d battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad.

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics and their influence is felt to this day.