Middle World

Medea Benjamin researches the sinister nature of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. In seven succinct chapters followed by a meditation on prospects for change, Benjamin shines a light on one of the most perplexing elements of American foreign policy. Why, over a period of decades and across various presidential administrations, has the US consistently supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests?

Instead of being trained to fight, the few soldiers each year selected for Talpiot are taught how to think. In order to join this unit they have to commit to being in the army for 10 years, rather than the three years a normal soldier serves. Talpiots are taught advanced level physics, math, and computer science as they train with soldiers from every other branch of the IDF. The result: young men and women become research and development machines.

During his more than 50 years in politics, Democratic strategist Douglas E. Schoen has produced nearly two dozen books that have deftly dissected national and international crises and offered prescriptions for solving them. Now, in The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World, Schoen delivers his most personal work. Bringing to life the antiwar youthquake of his Harvard years, Schoen introduces us to Cornel West, Walter Isaacson, Merrick Garland, and other classmates bound for glory.

It was an annus horribilis for Iran's Supreme Leader. The Green Movement had been crushed, but the regime was on edge, anxious lest democratic protests resurge. International sanctions were dragging down the economy while talk of war with the West grew. Hooman Majd was there for all of it. A new father at age fifty, he decided to take his blonde, blue-eyed Midwestern yoga instructor wife Karri and his adorable, only-eats-organic infant son Khash from their hip Brooklyn neighborhood to spend a year in the land of his birth.

Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.

The author of The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS and The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran returns with the sharp wit and boundless courage needed to expose the oncoming storm from Iran.

Il nuovo romanzo di Jonathan Coe: un quadro molto comico, ma ahinoi anche molto serio, della vita pubblica e privata in Gran Bretagna, dal 2010 al 2018. Del pubblico, copre le elezioni del primo governo di coalizione di tutta la storia britannica, le rivolte violente del 2011, i Giochi olimpici del 2012 e, naturalmente, il tellurico referendum per la Brexit del 2016. Del privato, mostra come questi eventi impattino sulle vite dei Trotter, una tipica famiglia delle Midlands inglesi.

In the seventh and eighth centuries AD, armies inspired by the new religion of Islam burst out of Arabia to subjugate the Levant, southwest Asia, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula. These Arab conquests followed immediately after the Prophet Mohammed's death in 632. By this time, against all the odds, he had managed to unite the feuding tribes of Arabia at the point of his sword. The Muslim conquests lasted until 750, by which time several generations of marauding Arab armies had carved out an Islamic empire which, in size and population, rivalled that of Rome at its zenith.

Moses Ben Maimon, frequently called Maimonides, was a medieval philosopher who revolutionized thinking about ethics, reason, and the Jewish Torah through his emphasis on reason and evidence. His works were broadly accepted by the Sephardi Jewish community and spread across the medieval world. St. Thomas Aquinas is known as one of the most important medieval philosophers and in many respects a harbinger of the Renaissance that began to flourish across Europe in the centuries that followed his life.

In the time period between the fall of Rome and the spread of the Renaissance across the European continent, many of today's European nations were formed, the Catholic Church rose to great prominence, some of history's most famous wars occurred, and a social class system was instituted that lasted over 1,000 years.

What happens when democracy produces "bad" outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? This "democratic dilemma" is one of the most persistent, vexing problems for America abroad, particularly in the Middle East. When Islamist parties rise to power through free elections, the United States has too often been ambivalent or opposed, preferring instead pliable dictators. With this legacy of democratic disrespect in mind, and drawing on new interviews with top American officials, Shadi Hamid explores universal questions of morality, power, and hypocrisy.

The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the city that would later became the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity by the Assad regime. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the US to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. Bashar, meanwhile, stayed in Syria and embarked on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despised.

تدور أحداث الرواية على مدار خمسة وسبعون عامًا بدءًا من الحرب العالمية الأولى حتى نهاية الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الأولى متتبعة ما عاشته فلسطين من تحولات عن طريق تتبع عائلة بكافة أجيالها، إذن هي رواية أجيال تنتقل بنا ما بين بيت ساحور، بيت لحم، القدس، وغيرها من المدن الفلسطينية.

There are many reasons why it might seem unwise to walk, mostly alone, through the Middle East. That, in part, is exactly why Leon McCarron did it. From Jerusalem, McCarron followed a series of wild hiking trails that trace ancient trading and pilgrimage routes and traverse some of the most contested landscapes in the world. In the West Bank, he met families struggling to lead normal lives amidst political turmoil and had a surreal encounter with the world's oldest and smallest religious sect.

When a tiger cub escapes from a nature reserve near Neel's island village, the rangers and villagers hurry to find her before the cub's anxious mother follows suit and endangers them all. Mr. Gupta, a rich newcomer to the island, is also searching - he wants to sell the cub's body parts on the black market. Neel and his sister, Rupa, resolve to find the cub first and bring her back to the reserve where she belongs.

كلُّ من عاشَ في الدَّار يصيرُ من أهلها؛ حمامُ الدَّار لا يغيب وأفعى الدَّار لا تخون، هذا ما قالتهُ لي بصيرة قبلَ سنتين من يومِنا ذاك، جدَّةُ والدي، أو رُبَّما جدَّةُ جدَّتِه، لا أدري فهي قديمةٌ جدًا، أزليَّة، ساكنةٌ في زاويةِ بهو البيت العربي القديم، ملتحِفةً سوادَها أسفلَ السُّلَّم. لماذا أسفلَ السُّلَّم؟ لم أسأل نفسي يومًا عن مواضع أشياءٍ اعتدتُها مُنذ مولدي، في بيتٍ عربيٍّ تطلُّ حُجُراته الضيِّقة على بهوٍ داخلي غير مسقوف، بهو بصيرة التي لم أرَها تفتحُ عينيها يومًا، كأنما خِيطَ جفناها برموشها منذ الأزل.

يونس الخطَّاط، بطل رواية "هنا الوردة"، الذي يبتلعه الحوت المجازي، شخصيَّة مثيرة للإعجاب، فهو مزيج من العاشق، والمتمرِّد، والمغامر، والحالم الذي يمشي إلى هدفه الكبير جارَّاً معه سائر شخصيَّات الرواية التي ترى حقيقة يونس بينما يبقى هو الوحيد الذي لا يرى ذاته لأنه، ببساطة، دون كيشوت العربي.

هذه الرواية تعتبر عملا ابداعيا رائعا يتميز بحيوية السرد ، فتجذبك من صفحاتها الأولى ببساطة مدهشة لتستغرق فى عالم مترابط من الشخصيات النابضة القريبة، اذ تقدم الكاتبة لوحة اجتماعية شديدة التشابك والكثافة ، تكتشف وتحرك الحياة الاجتماعية المصرية منذ خمسينيات القرن الماضى وحتى العقد الأول من القرن الحالى، وتصهر ثقافات الأولياء والمتصوفة مع عالم الحكمة والفلسفة اليونانية والغناء والحكى مع حضارات التبت ووصفات السحر الشعبي ،تلك العوالم التى من خلال تفاصيلها تقودك إلى فلسفة الطبيعة الإنسانية الممزوجة حتما ما بين عالم الروحانيات وأرض الواقع .. ما بين المتمنى والنجاح

The novelist Amir Taj Al-Sir presents us with his new novel entitled French Perfume. It is the story of many people whom we can see in our daily lives, all of whom dream of a better tomorrow, but in their lives they have nothing but monotony, stagnation, pain and regret, and with it they lose hope in a bright tomorrow and turn into forgotten and erased characters.

"إن تجربة الشاعر والروائي العماني زهران القاسمي تقوم على تبادلات متعددة، فهو نموذج للمبدع المتعدد الأوجه، بائع العسل. هذا اسم زهران القاسمي وليس وصفه! رحلات عديدة للبحث عن عسل الجبال، عن الروح في وجودها الصافي، في طبيعتها الأولى، وعن ما يشبه كل واحد منها الآخر فيه.