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"You're going where?" Carol Spencer Mitchell's father demanded as she set off in 1984 to cover the Middle East as a photojournalist for Newsweek and other publications. In this intensely thoughtful memoir, Spencer Mitchell probes the motivations that impelled her, a single, Jewish woman, to document the turmoil roiling the Arab world in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as how her experiences as a photojournalist "compelled [me] to set aside [my] cameras and reexamine the way images are created, scen...

This 13000 page collection brings together for the first time the detailed reports on what was happening in the British controlled territories of Aden and its hinterland from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of British rule in November 1967. It provides a unique guide to events as they happened on a monthly, weekly, or even a daily basis. The reports were based on firsthand observations by British officials on the spot or on information supplied by informers and travellers from the i...

From the chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal comes a deeply reported exploration of the decades-long power struggle between Iran and the United States that led to a historic (and potentially disastrous) nuclear deal. For more than a decade, the United States has been engaged in a war with Iran as momentous as any other in the Middle East--a war all the more significant as it has largely been hidden from public view. Through a combination of economic sanctions, global...

In the growing body of literature about the evolution and the role of Islam in Europe as a whole and the Balkans in particular, this volume holds a special place as it offers a multidisciplinary approach to the encounter-transformation-discontinuity-continuity of Islam in the region. Thus, it provides excellent material for students of social and political studies, history and even architecture, at the bachelor and master level. At the same time, it aspires to attract the attention of researcher...

Oman is a stunningly beautiful country with a rich history and bountiful heritage set in a breathtaking landscape. As an ancient seafaring nation, Oman has always been open to the world, and is now becoming increasingly popular with discerning travellers and tourists. Since the accession of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said in 1970, Oman has thrived, adopting the best features of modern technology while at the same time keeping its own heritage and unique culture very much alive. Within this di...

Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem tells the saga of a Palestinian family living in Jerusalem during the British mandate, and its fate in the diaspora following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The story is told by two voices: a mother, who was a child in Jerusalem in the 1930s, and her daughter, who comments on her mother's narrative. The real hero of the narrative, however, is the family home in Old Jerusalem, which was built in the 15th century and which still stands today. Within...

President Barack Obama’s first trip abroad in his second term took him to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, where he despondently admitted to those waiting for words of encouragement, “It is a hard slog to work through all of these issues.” Contrast this gloomy assessment with Obama’s optimism on the second day of his first term, when he appointed former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as his special envoy for Middle East peace, boldly asserting that his administration would “actively...

In Desire and Liberation Vaddera Chandidas creates a new metaphysical system. He bases this new system on earlier Indian traditions of sutra literature. The author rejects major convergences in philosophy from both India and the West, especially on the ontological primacy of non-being that results in permanence, which he posits as a mere project of the intellect. He is especially opposed to the idea of permanence, which renders unreliable anything that is not permanent but changing. Thus, desire...

A history of 19th- and early 20th-century Iran. This was the period of rule by the Qajar dynasty up to its final degeneration and collapse, leading to the autocratic and authoritarian rule of Reza, father of Iran's most recent shah. It covers how the Qajars came to power following the bloody conflicts of 18th-century Persia, how they maintained their power (and Iran's sovereignty) in the face of extraordinary domestic, British and Russian pressures, and finally how they were overwhelmed by their...

Britain's role in the peace negotiations after the First World War gave her the opportunity to control - and eventually change the nature of - Palestine, a country with a 90% Arab population, which some Jews in the west wanted to make into a Jewish state. This book describes how that transformation came about, by Britain ignoring the rights of the majority of citizens of Palestine and setting in motion laws and policies which allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews from the rest of the world...