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Hamid Burhan, a retired government employee, and his loyal wife Saniya have built themselves a home in the quiet southern suburb of Helwan, where they raise their son and two daughters, expecting life to remain as blessed as it was in the photograph of the happy family at a picnic in a Nileside park in the early 1930s. Events in the wider world impinge wars, revolution, peace with Israel while Saniya and the old house in Helwan remain the bedrock of the family's values. But everyone else is buffeted in one way or another by the tumultuous processes of change in Egyptian politics and society. In this compact novel written in 1982, Naguib Mahfouz again uses a family saga, as he did in his Cairo Trilogy, to reflect on the processes of enormous social transformation that Egypt underwent in the space of a few generations in the twentieth century.
Borderline provides a study of the disturbed mind. Professional psychologist Peter Chadwick draws upon his own personal experience of madness to provide a exploration of the psychology of paranoia and schizophrenia. The book goes beyond a narrowly focused analytical approach to examine schizophrenia from as many perspectives as possible. Using participant observation, introspection, case study and experimental methods, Chadwick shows how paranoid and delusional thinking are only exaggerations of processes to be found in normal cognition. Impressed by the similarities between the thinking of mystics and psychotics, he argues that some forms of madness are closely related to profound mystical ...
Nir Rosen's Aftermath, an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world. Rosen -- who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has "great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency" -- has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, S...
Losing Istanbul offers an intimate history of empire, following the rise and fall of a generation of Arab-Ottoman imperialists living in Istanbul. Mostafa Minawi shows how these men and women negotiated their loyalties and guarded their privileges through a microhistorical study of the changing social, political, and cultural currents between 1878 and the First World War. He narrates lives lived in these turbulent times—the joys and fears, triumphs and losses, pride and prejudices—while focusing on the complex dynamics of ethnicity and race in an increasingly Turco-centric imperial capital. Drawing on archival records, newspaper articles, travelogues, personal letters, diaries, photos, and interviews, Minawi shows how the loyalties of these imperialists were questioned and their ethnic identification weaponized. As the once diverse empire comes to an end, they are forced to give up their home in the imperial capital. An alternative history of the last four decades of the Ottoman Empire, Losing Istanbul frames global pivotal events through the experiences of Arab-Ottoman imperial loyalists who called Istanbul home, on the eve of a vanishing imperial world order.
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Finding Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, had long been the U.S. military's top priority -- trumping even the search for Osama bin Laden. No brutality was spared in trying to squeeze intelligence from Zarqawi's suspected associates. But these "force on force" techniques yielded exactly nothing, and, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the military rushed a new breed of interrogator to Iraq. Matthew Alexander, a former criminal investigator and head of a handpicked interrogation team, gives us the first inside look at the U.S. military's attempt at more civilized interrogation techniques -- and their astounding success. The intelligence coup that enabled the June 7, 200...
"The story depicts the life of a conscientious veteran. The subject matter of the story is serious and tends towards the realistic side of the aftermath of war. The story is about the analysis of the human soul lost in fantasy and in reality, about submission and rebellion, and about philosophy and tyranny. The story is vivid with images, and complex and rich in characters. It is an intriguing tale that defines the socio-political scenarios. Vietnam War veteran Joe is tempted to participate in Middle Eastern and international politics, compelled with insinuated illusion of establishing freedom and democracy. The subsequent effects of the human tragedies engulfed from the political scenarios devastate him, and he seeks refuge beyond the realm of humanity."
A study of the career and writings of Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1860-1914) an early feminist thinker and writer in Egypt. It focuses on her newspaper essays, novels, poetry, and her play which was the first to be published by a female author in Arabic.
Oil and God is an unabashed realpolitik analysis of U.S. oil geopolitics and Saudi Arabia’s symbiotic attachment to Wahhabism. Oil and God contends that oil hegemony is world hegemony. The U.S. has protected the al-Sauds since 1945. Some 35,000 U.S. soldiers are in regional air and naval bases to protect the oil fields and ruling sheikhs. In Washington’s hands, Saudi oil is a non-lethal WMD. Not even the 9/11 atrocities could make Washington punish Riyadh. Oil and God investigates why Iraq was destroyed, why Iran was allowed to dominate Baghdad, and why Shi’ite/Sunni wars continue to burn. Once oil is replaced by green energy, Washington will abandon Riyadh, Saudi cash will dwindle, and Wahhabi terror will diminish.