Showing titles in Middle East

David Rundell - one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab world.

When Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt, he overthrew the hated Persian overlords and was welcomed as a saviour. He repaid them by showing due reverence to their long-held traditions. After his death, as the Greek empire broke up and his closest advisers squabbled over the spoils, a Macedonian general named Ptolemy seized the Egyptian throne, ushering in a new dynasty that would last for 300 years. What followed was as dramatic and compelling as any period in Egyptian history.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.

Thoroughly updated and revised for 2024, JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY is the history of the Middle East through the lens of the Holy City and the Holy Land, from King David to the wars and chaos of today. The history of Jerusalem is the story of the world: Jerusalem is the universal city, the...

The spectacular rise and dramatic fall of super-assassin Carlos the Jackal—one of history’s most infamous terrorist masterminds and the inspiration for numerous celebrated works of pop culture—told with new revelations from the Jackal himself, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of...

The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure. It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt's hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China's most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain. From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds.

'Come for a walk with me, if you would, along the streets of Jerusalem. My family has walked these streets for more than a thousand years.' With this invitation, Palestine: A Short History offers a powerful introduction to Palestinian history through a century of conflict and resistance...

The First Intifada was an uprising in the Gaza Strip and West Bank that began in 1987 and ended in 1993. There are two quite different and contradictory historical perspectives on this conflict. Palestinians generally viewed the uprising as a popular resistance movement against military occupation and policies they experienced as oppressive. From the Israeli side, however, the actions taken were seen as a reasonable and legitimate response to protect citizens and soldiers from violence and to maintain order in territory under their control.

Nel 1948 nacque lo Stato d'Israele. Ma nel 1948 ebbe luogo anche la Nakba ('catastrofe'), ovvero la cacciata di circa 250.000 palestinesi dalla loro terra. La vulgata israeliana ha sempre narrato che in quell'anno, allo scadere del Mandato britannico in Palestina, le Nazioni Unite avevano proposto di dividere la regione in due Stati: il movimento sionista era d'accordo, ma il mondo arabo si oppose; per questo, entrò in guerra con Israele e convince i palestinesi ad abbandonare i territori – nonostante gli appelli dei leader ebrei a rimanere – pur di facilitare l'ingresso delle truppe arabe.

An incisive exploration of women and work, showing how globalization’s promise of liberation instead set the stage for repression—from the acclaimed author of Factory Girls “Vividly rendered . . . Chang brings us into living rooms and onto assembly lines with female characters as...

A "masterly" (Economist), prize-winning, internationally bestselling history of books in the ancient world "Exquisite. . . . Beautifully translated into English by Charlotte Whittle, who is able to convey both Vallejo’s passionate narrative presence and her synthesising intelligence.” —The...

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...

“Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read.” – The Times, Book of the Year A New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is “a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate...

Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, uncounted thousands of civilians have died in the fighting and as a result of the destruction. These are deaths for which no one assumes responsibility and which have been presented, historically, as fallout. No one knows their true...

The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day, and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism, and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East?

BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen presents a personal history of the Middle East. Over these 25 programmes, Jeremy reflects on the present and the past of the Middle East, after reporting from the region for more than a quarter of a century. He combines first-hand accounts from the front line...

David Headley, the American Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.

Ahmed Rashid, called “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” by Christopher Hitchens, brings the shadowy world of the Taliban and its impact on Afghanistan and the Middle East and Central Asia into sharp focus in this modern classic. Rashid offers an authoritative account of the Taliban’s rise to power, its role in oil and gas company decisions, and the effects of changing American attitudes toward the Taliban. He also describes the new face of Islamic fundamentalism and explains why Afghanistan has become the world center for international terrorism.

For more than two centuries, Egypt was ruled by the most powerful, successful and richest dynasty of kings in its long end epic history. They included the female king Hatshepsut, the warrior kings Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, the religious radical Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, and most famously of all for the wealth of his tomb the short-lived boy king Tutankhamun. The power and riches of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty came at enormous cost to Egypt's enemies and most of its people.