Showing titles in Middle East

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.

Many students, history enthusiasts, and concerned observers yearn for a factual, balanced understanding of the decades of turmoil and tense relations in the Middle East. Presenting 'The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Simplified,' an all-encompassing guide that will empower you by unmasking the complexities and historical depths of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering a well-researched, unbiased, and accessible digest of the grand story of two nations intertwined in an enduring and heartrending struggle.

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.

Alev Scott's odyssey began when she looked beyond Turkey's borders for contemporary traces of the Ottoman Empire. Their 800-year rule ended a century ago - and yet, travelling through 12 countries from Kosovo to Greece to Palestine, she uncovers a legacy that's vital and relevant, where medieval ethnic diversity meets 21st-century nationalism, and displaced people seek new identities. It's a story of surprises.

This book is written by two of the leading terrorist experts in the world. Hacking ISIS will explain in graphic detail how ISIS produces religious cultism, recruits vulnerable young people of all religions and nationalities and disseminates their brutal social media to the world. More, the book will map out the cyberspace-level tactics on how ISIS spreads its terrifying content, how it distributes tens of thousands of pieces of propaganda daily and is winning the battle in cyberspace and how to stop it in its tracks.

By the middle of the second century BC, the city of Rome was spiraling toward bankruptcy and moral decay. The generation which had defeated Hannibal and brought the Mediterranean under Roman control had now passed away, even as gold poured in. Hardly a Roman name of any note appears for half a century. The noble Roman has disappeared. The once feared Roman army has become a mere shadow of its former self, and the public have come to accustom themselves to news of shattering defeats.

More than a decade ago, the historian Tony Judt considered whether the behavior of Israel was becoming not only "bad for Israel itself" but also, on a wider scale, "bad for the Jews." Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, this issue has grown ever more urgent. In The State of Israel vs. the Jews, veteran journalist Sylvain Cypel addresses it in depth, exploring Israel's rightward shift on the international scene and with regard to the diaspora.

The history of the tablets translated in the following pages is strange and beyond modern scientists' comprehension. Their age is astounding, dating back 36,000 years B.C. Thoth is an Atlantean Priest-King who established a colony in ancient Egypt after the mother country was sunk. He was the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which has been incorrectly attributed to Cheops. He included his knowledge of ancient wisdom as well as securely hidden records and instruments from ancient Atlantis.

In 1921 a small group of self-appointed patriots set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They named their operation Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution. Over several years the men tracked down and assassinated former Turkish leaders. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told until now.

Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world’s first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world.

The Crusades are the prototype and epitome of the Holy War. The fight to take control of the city of Jerusalem, believed to be the most sacred Holy City to two distinct religions of Christianity and Islam, has lasted far longer than the two centuries of the Crusades, and its reach has extended far further than Europe and the Middle East.

On a cold, cloudy day in early February 1985, Shelley Wachsmann, then resident nautical archaeologist for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, drove to Kibbutz Ginosar, an agricultural settlement near the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Two brothers, avid amateur archaeologists, had found a boat buried in the lake, its outlines revealed by receding lake waters. The boat was "possibly ancient," according to the handwritten note placed on Wachsmann's desk a day or two before.

On a beautiful sunny day in March 1979, as thousands of Egyptians awaited in anticipation, a plane landed in Cairo. Moments later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stepped out, welcomed by thunderous cheers from an overjoyed crowd. He had just returned to his country from Washington D.C., where five days earlier he had signed a historic treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, bringing an end to three decades of war and hostilities between Israelis and Egyptians.

As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots - Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators - to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East. Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called "Separation Barrier".

This book explains the historical roots of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, which has lost none of its explosiveness to the present day, in a comprehensive and easy-to-understand manner. The question of who owns the Holy Land is more relevant today than ever. The debates on this topic are often characterized by ignorance and strong emotions, while partiality and power interests still obscure the view on the political situation in the Middle East.

Constructed over a span of about 20 years in the mid-17th century as a mausoleum for the wife of Emperor Shah Jahan, the Taj Mahal is aptly described by UNESCO, which designated it a World Heritage site, as "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage".

In this revealing journey through Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza itself, longtime journalist Mark Patinkin explores one of the world’s most divisive conflicts, capturing the stories of both sides in “The Holy Land at War.” He saw where Oct. 7 unfolded, and later witnessed Palestinian hardship - and hospitality - in Ramallah and Bethlehem. He traveled through the now dystopian landscape inside the war zone, spoke with wounded IDF soldiers, the parents of Israeli hostages, and heard the words of everyday Palestinians struggling to survive in Gaza.

The World after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the darker peoples’s frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population.

Did you know that it was during the New Kingdom period that ancient Egyptian kings started calling themselves “pharaohs"? Previously, they were simply referred to as kings. But the fact that we call all of them pharaohs today speaks about how important and influential the New Kingdom was. It is also the most researched period of ancient Egyptian history because it has an abundance of surviving evidence. This is also the time when some of the best-known pharaohs ruled, such as Ahmose, Hatshepsut, Thutmose, Nefertiti, and Ramses II.