Middle World

Ten years after an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, cries of "Benghazi!" still echo across America. But instead of a landmark event to be taken seriously, it has become a punchline, an empty word, or a code for controversy and political theatre. In this thrilling retelling, Ethan Chorin reveals Benghazi as a watershed moment in American history, one that helped create the world America lives in today: polarized, fearful, and dangerously unstable.

En los preludios de la Primera Guerra Mundial, en pleno apogeo del colonialismo europeo, un agente del Gobierno británico se interna en la península arábiga con la finalidad de subyugar una inminente rebelión anticolonial. El emisario es cuestión recorre, bajo un sol abrasador, amplias regiones desérticas. Trata con los enemigos del Imperio Británico y se gana su confianza. Se convierte en uno de ellos... y actúa de forma subrepticia a favor de los intereses de la metrópli, aunque le repugna tanto ejercer ese papel que acaba simpatizando con la causa árabe.

Beim Einloggen in die WELT fliehen Startum Eisenwolf und seine Freunde gerade noch rechtzeitig aus Palnisdale vor den nördlichen Invasoren. Ihre einzige Chance zu überleben besteht darin, der Orkhorde irgendwie lange genug vorauszueilen, um die Schiffe erreichen zu können, die in Darom auf sie warten. Ein nahezu unmögliches Vorhaben, da die Hafenstadt fast zwei Tagesmärsche entfernt ist. Irgendwie muss Startum einen Weg finden, das Unmögliche zu vollbringen oder er wird alles verlieren.

Dr. Wendy Elisheva Somerson, PhD, shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies—and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging. This unmetabolized trauma can lock us into a survival state that brings historical grief into the present moment…and keep us from exploring critical questions that help us tend our legacies and live into a better world.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early second century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down. Little is known of this period of British history, but soon the Anglo-Saxons showed up and began to settle the land, creating a patchwork of little kingdoms and starting a new era of British history.

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "the other", this groundbreaking anthology contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, Iraq + 100 is also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

Being able to detect black magic isnt all tea and crumpetsand for Theodosia Throckmorton, it can be a decidedly tricky business! When Sticky Will drags Theo to a magic show featuring the Great Awi Bubu, she quickly senses there is more to the magician than he lets on, setting in motion a chain of events she never could have bargained for.

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?

During 1915 to 1923, one and a half million Armenian people were deported and killed in the most appalling ways comprehensible. They were ripped from their homes (in a land where they had lived for longer than history can tell, a land so old that many speculate it was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden) and sent off on death marches across the blistering Syrian Desert. They were shot on the thresholds of the houses where they were raising their children. They were butchered with swords in gruesome ways in order to dishearten those left alive.

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

Ancient Iran: Cosmology, Mythology, History presents Iran's pre-Islamic history within the context of both its complex cosmology and rich mythology. The audiobook uses the concept of farr to show how authority, finding guidance in the cosmic realm, organized the lives of Iran's hero-saints in the mythic realm. It also discusses how historical monarchs organized their hierarchical societies according to the dictates of Ahura Mazda.

The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.

Balıkçı'nın kitaplaşmamış yazılarından derlenen bu yapıt, bir yandan yurdumuzun tarih, sanat ve uygarlığını sergilerken, öte yandan Anadolu birikiminin nesnel temellerine ışık tutuyor. Halikarnas Balıkçısı'nın birbirinden ilginç düşünce yazılarını bir araya getiren Merhaba Anadolu'dan tadımlık: “Anadolu'da açılan özel bankaların garip gelenekleri vardı. Bankalar şairlere bankalarıyla ilgili şiirler sipariş ederlerdi. Bu şiirler bankaların kapılarına asılırdı. Bu yolla bankaların sanatçılara da yardımları dokunurdu. Şimdi de bankaların sanatçılara yardımları olmuyor değil…”

Iran and Iraq served as the first WWII theater in which the US, the UK, and the USSR fought alongside each other. Historian Ashley Jackson charts the intense Allied military activity in Iran and Iraq and reveals how deeply the war impacted common people's lives. He also provides revelations about the true nature of Anglo-American relations in the region, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the continuing corrosive legacy of Western influence in these lands.

إنّها حكاية الغجر وعالمهم الغريب..فبعيدًا عن الصورة النمطية للغجر المتمايلين على أنغام الموسيقى والمبتسمين دومًا يغوص جمال ناجي في أعماق عالم الغجر، نشاتهم وتقاليدهم وأسباب تشتّتهم منذ ولادة جدهم الأول عن طريق حكاية الغجريّ "سبلو" الذي يقرِّر ترك حياة الغجر والاستقرار في الوادي إلى جانب الفلاحين مع زوجته وابنته "هجير" فيشتري قطعة أرضٍ من "عثمان أبو بركة" ويستقرَّ هناك، لكنَّ مجرمي الكهوف لا يتركونه وشانه فيفقد زوجته ويبدأ رحلة البحث عن قاتلها. يتزامن ذلك مع هجرة جموعٍ من الغجر إلى الوادر وبحثهم عن حياة الاستقرار ونموّ بذرة الحب في قلب "هجير".

آنذاك لم تكن تفكر أبدًا في العمل أو السفر خارج القاهرة، بل ربما لم تكن تفكر بالأساس في مغادرة غرفتها...كانت قد مرّت فترة ليست بقصيرة منذ تخرجت من الجامعة، قضتها فيما يشبه حالات البيات الشتوي، لم تفكر في العمل ولا في المشاركة في أي نشاط اجتماعي، وكأنها صنعت لنفسها نمطًا للحياة داخل غرفتها وتكيّفت معه، بل وربما صارت تستمتع به. وكلما فاتحتها أمها أو أختها أو مدام إيمان جارتها في موضوع خروجها للحياة كانت تراوغهن، وكلما حاولن حثّها على الظهور في المجتمعات، كانت تتعلّل بأنها سوف تبحث عن بعض الدورات التدريبية لاكتساب لغة جديدة أو خبرة إضافية...ولا تفعل شيئًا من ذلك...

رواية تغوص في أعماق البطل السجين، وفي نفسية السجَّان الذي يستجوبه، وتقدم لنا صورة مختلفة تمامًا عن إيران.

Deserts of sand and deserts of the heart, Middle Eastern deserts and American deserts: Two Deserts, a collection of stories, follows the circles of two unforgettable women across cultures and deserts. The Arabian circle includes a 17-year-old girl yearning for freedom and a Muslim mother plotting to rescue her son from a jihadist movement. The American circle includes a hooker who is training her daughter for the life, a priest in love, and a club of women whose husbands are dying.

Flucht aus dem Iran und der Kampf um Identität und Anerkennung. Seit 1979, mit dem Sturz des Schahs, sind die Töchter der hochgestellten iranischen Familie Valiat im amerikanischen Exil. Nur ihre Mutter, die noch immer Heimat, Tradition und Stolz verkörpert, blieb damals in Iran. Als bei dem alljährlichen Familientreffen in Aspen die Dinge aus dem Ruder laufen und die exaltierte Shirin erst gegen Kaution wieder aus der Arrestzelle entlassen wird, verändert sich etwas in den Frauen, jede muss sich schmerzlichen Fragen stellen.