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Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) by Cornell H. Fleischer
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Blind Ambition: The White House Years
John W. Dean - 1976
Dean was one of the primary players in the Watergate scandal—and ultimately became the government’s key witness in the investigations that ended the Nixon presidency. After the scandal subsided, Dean rebuilt his career, first in business and then as a bestselling author and lecturer. But while the events were still fresh in his mind, he wrote this remarkable memoir about the operations of the Nixon White House and the crisis that led to the president’s resignation. Blind Ambition offers an insider’s view of the deceptions and machinations that brought down an administration and changed the American people’s view of politics and power. It also contains Dean’s own unsparing reflections on the personal demons that drove him to participate in the sordid affair. Today, Dean is a respected and outspoken advocate for transparency and ethics in government.
Istanbul: Memories and the City
Orhan Pamuk - 2003
Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or–hüzün–that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper
Jack Coughlin - 2005
Shooter is his harrowing first-person account of a sniper's life on and off the modern battlefield.Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin is a divorced father of two who grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb. At the age of nineteen, although he had never even held a gun, he joined the Marines and would spend the next twenty years behind the scope of a long-range precision rifle as a sniper.In that time he accumulated one of the most successful sniper records in the Corps, ranging through many of the world's hotspots. During Operation Iraqi Freedom alone, he recorded at least thirty-six kills, thirteen of them in a single twenty-four-hour period.Now Coughlin has written a highly personal story about his deadly craft, taking readers deep inside an invisible society that is off-limits to outsiders. This is not a heroic battlefield memoir, but the careful study of an exceptional man who must keep his sanity while carrying forward one of the deadliest legacies in the U.S. military today.
Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel
Dan Ephron - 2015
Killing a King relates the parallel stories of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would lead to peace, and the other plotted murder.Dan Ephron, who reported from the Middle East for much of the past two decades, covered both the rally where Rabin was killed and the subsequent murder trial. He describes how Rabin, a former general who led the army in the Six-Day War of 1967, embraced his nemesis, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, and set about trying to resolve the twentieth century’s most vexing conflict. He recounts in agonizing detail how extremists on both sides undermined the peace process with ghastly violence. And he reconstructs the relentless scheming of Amir, a twenty-five-year-old law student and Jewish extremist who believed that Rabin’s peace effort amounted to a betrayal of Israel and the Jewish people. As Amir stalked Rabin over many months, the agency charged with safeguarding the Israeli leader missed key clues, overlooked intelligence reports, and then failed to protect him at the critical moment, exactly twenty years ago. It was the biggest security blunder in the agency’s history.Through the prism of the assassination, much about Israel today comes into focus, from the paralysis in peacemaking to the fraught relationship between current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. Based on Israeli police reports, interviews, confessions, and the cooperation of both Rabin’s and Amir’s families, Killing a King is a tightly coiled narrative that reaches an inevitable, shattering conclusion. One can’t help but wonder what Israel would look like today had Rabin lived.
Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan
Sally Armstrong - 2002
In Veiled Threat, Sally Armstrong introduces several of these women—including the deputy prime minister of Afghanistan, Dr. Sima Samar—who describe the living hell they experienced as well as the quiet rebellion—clandestine schools for girls and health clinics for women—that took place in an effort to subvert the Taliban's hateful edicts.One of the first Western journalists to visit Afghanistan, Armstrong gives us an insider's view of the deplorable situation. She also provides a broader perspective, leading us through the history of Afghanistan, including the ebb and flow of women's rights. She examines what the Koran actually says about women. She points a finger at the international community for accepting women's oppression in the name of culture, and she accuses the Taliban and other fundamentalist leaders of distorting Islam for political opportunism. While there have been other books about the women in Afghanistan, VEILED THREAT holds a unique position. There have been two autobiographies: ZOYA'S STORY and MY FORBIDDEN FACE; a photo book, UNVEILED; and a book about RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) called VEILED COURAGE. VEILD THREAT is much broader in its approach.
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Agatha Christie Mallowan - 1946
She also gave us Come, Tell Me How You Live, a charming, fascinating, and wonderfully witty nonfiction account of her days on an archaeological dig in Syria with her husband, renowned archeologist Max Mallowan. Something completely different from arguably the best-selling author of all time, Come, Tell Me How You Live is an evocative journey to the fascinating Middle East of the 1930s that is sure to delight Dame Agatha’s millions of fans, as well as aficionados of Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody mysteries and eager armchair travelers everywhere.
Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey
Jack Cavanaugh - 2006
Yet within a few years of retiring from the ring, Tunney willingly receded into the background, renouncing the image of jock celebrity that became the stock in trade of so many of his contemporaries. To this day, Gene Tunney’s name is most often recognized only in conjunction with his epic “long count” second bout with Dempsey.In Tunney, the veteran journalist and author Jack Cavanaugh gives an account of the incomparable sporting milieu of the Roaring Twenties, centered around Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, the gladiators whose two titanic clashes transfixed a nation. Cavanaugh traces Tunney’s life and career, taking us from the mean streets of Tunney’s native Greenwich Village to the Greenwich, Connecticut, home of his only love, the heiress Polly Lauder; from Parris Island to Yale University; from Tunney learning fisticuffs as a skinny kid at the knee of his longshoreman father to his reign atop boxing’s glamorous heavyweight division. Gene Tunney defied easy categorization, as a fighter and as a person. He was a sex symbol, a master of defensive boxing strategy, and the possessor of a powerful, and occasionally showy, intellect–qualities that prompted the great sportswriters of the golden age of sports to portray Tunney as “aloof.” This intelligence would later serve him well in the corporate world, as CEO of several major companies and as a patron of the arts. And while the public craved reports of bad blood between Tunney and Dempsey, the pair were, in reality, respectful ring adversaries who in retirement grew to share a sincere lifelong friendship–with Dempsey even stumping for Tunney’s son, John, during the younger Tunney’s successful run for Congress. Tunney offers a unique perspective on sports, celebrity, and popular culture in the 1920s. But more than an exciting and insightful real-life tale, replete with heads of state, irrepressible showmen, mobsters, Hollywood luminaries, and the cream of New York society, Tunney is an irresistible story of an American underdog who forever changed the way fans look at their heroes.From the Hardcover edition.
Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time
Karen Armstrong - 2006
There is more historical data on his life than on that of the founder of any other major faith, and yet his story is little known. Karen Armstrong's immaculately researched new biography of Muhammad will enable readers to understand the true origins and spirituality of a faith that is all too often misrepresented as cruel, intolerant, and inherently violent. An acclaimed authority on religious and spiritual issues, Armstrong offers a balanced, in-depth portrait, revealing the man at the heart of Islam by dismantling centuries of misconceptions. Armstrong demonstrates that Muhammad's life--a pivot point in history--has genuine relevance to the global crises we face today.
An Evil Cradling
Brian Keenan - 1992
He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi'ite militiamen and held in the suburbs of Beirut for the next four and a half years. For much of that time he was shut off from all news and contact with anyone other than his jailers and, later, his fellow hostages, amongst them John McCarthy.
Captive in Iran
Maryam Rostampour - 2013
Here, prisoners are routinely tortured, abused, and violated. Executions are frequent and sudden. But for two women imprisoned for their Christian faith--Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh--this hell on earth was a place of unlikely grace as they reflected God's love and compassion to their fellow prisoners and guards. Against all odds, Evin would become the only church many of them had ever known.In Captive in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh recount their 259 days in Evin. It's an amazing story of unyielding faith--when denying God would have meant freedom. Of incredible support from strangers around the world who fought for the women's release. And of bringing God's light into one of the world's darkest places--giving hope to those who had lost everything, and showing love to those in despair.
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran
Christopher de Bellaigue - 2005
But what happened to the hostage-takers, the suicidal holy warriors, the martyrs, and the mullahs responsible for the now moribund revolution? Is modern Iran a society at peace with itself and the world, or truly a dangerous spoke in the "Axis of Evil"?Christopher de Bellaigue, a Western journalist married to an Iranian woman and a longtime resident of a prosperous suburb of Tehran, offers a stunning insider's view of a culture hitherto hidden from American eyes, and reveals the true hearts and minds of an extraordinary people.
Taliban
James Fergusson - 2010
The Russians, who had occupied the country throughout the 1980s, were long gone. The disparate ethnic and religious leaders who had united to eject the invaders - the famous mujaheddin - were at each others' throats. For the rural poor of Kandahar province, life was almost impossible.On 12 October 1994 a small group of religious students decided to take matters into their own hands. Led by an illiterate village mullah with one eye, some 200 of them surrounded and took Spin Boldak, a trucking stop on the border with Pakistan. From this short and unremarkable border skirmish, a legend was born. The students' numbers swelled as news of their triumph spread. The Taliban, as they now called themselves - taliban is the plural of talib, literally 'one who seeks knowledge' - had a simple mission statement: the disarmament of the population, and the establishment of a theocracy based on Sharia law. They fought with a religious zeal that the warring mujaheddin could not match.By February 1995, this people's revolt had become a national movement; 18 months later Kabul fell, and the country was effectively theirs. James Fergusson's fascinating account of this extraordinary story will be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the situation in Afghanistan, now and for the future...
Fast Eddie: My 20 Years on the Run as Britain's Most Wanted Man
Eddie Maher - 2017
The moment in crime history that one of Britain's most audacious thefts ever took place and the legend of 'Fast Eddie' was created.This is the story of how Securicor guard Eddie Maher managed to pull off a £1.2 million heist, fled the country despite every port being closed, spawned an international manhunt, and managed to evade capture for 20 years. As Britain's Most Wanted Man, he led 30 detectives, FBI and Interpol on a wild goose chase across the USA.Dubbed 'Fast Eddie' by the press, he was always one step ahead and after two decades on the run with his family using a series of of aliases and identities, Eddie began to think he'd committed the perfect crime until a cruel and dramatic betrayal proved otherwise...Like a Hollywood movie script and told in full for the first time, Fast Eddie is the compelling story of how an ordinary British man became America's most notorious fugitive.
Under the Wire: Marie Colvin's Final Assignment
Paul Conroy - 2013
Also the basis of the documentary Under the Wire. Marie Colvin was an internationally recognized American foreign war correspondent who was killed in a rocket attack in 2012 while reporting on the suffering of civilians inside Syria. She was renowned for her iconic flair and her fearlessness: wearing the pearls that were a gift from Yasser Arafat and her black eye-patch, she reported from places so dangerous no other correspondent would dare to go. Photographer Paul Conroy forged a close bond with Colvin as they put their lives on the line time and time again to report from the world's conflict zones, and he was by her side during her final assignment. A riveting war journal, Under the Wire is Paul's gripping, visceral, and moving account of their friendship and the final year he spent alongside her. When Marie and Paul were smuggled into Syria by rebel forces, they found themselves trapped in one of the most hellish neighborhoods on earth. Fierce barrages of heavy artillery fire rained down on the buildings surrounding them, killing and maiming hundreds of civilians. Marie was killed by a rocket which also blew hole in Paul's thigh big enough to put his hand through. Bleeding profusely, short of food and water, and in excruciating pain, Paul then endured five days of intense bombardment before being evacuated in a daring escape in which he rode a motorbike through a tunnel, crawled through enemy terrain, and finally scaled a 12-foot-high wall. Astonishingly vivid, heart-stoppingly dramatic. and shot through with dark humor, in Under the Wire Paul Conroy shows what it means to a be a war reporter in the 21st century. His is a story of two brave people drawn together by a shared compulsion to bear witness.
The Life & Legend Of Lucrezia Borgia
M.G. Scarsbrook - 2011
This book gathers together all the crucial information needed for a study into the life of Lucrezia, including a detailed timeline, a biographical profile, an extensive description of her life in Rome, and a discussion of the Borgia family's legendary connection to poison. Optimized for navigation as an eBook, with a table of contents linked to every section, this book also features a broad collection of texts regarding Lucrezia and her notorious family. INCLUDED INSIDE: - Lucretia Borgia: According To Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day by Ferdinand Gregorovius - The Borgias by Alexander Dumas (from 'Celebrated Crimes') - The Life of Cesare Borgia by Rafael Sabatini - Lucrezia Borgia, libretto by Felice Romani for the Opera by Gaetano Donizetti (in Italian) - Encyclopedia Britannica articles (11th edition) on Lucrezia Borgia and Cesare Borgia - Love Letter From Pietro Bembo to Lucrezia Borgia BONUS FEATURE: - An exclusive excerpt of M. G. Scarsbrook's novel POISON IN THE BLOOD: THE MEMOIRS OF LUCREZIA BORGIA, an historical thriller featuring Lucrezia Borgia fighting to save her husband from assassination by her powerful family.