Book picks similar to
Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu
history
middle-east
non-fiction
turkey
Mossad: Israel's Most Secret Service
Ronald Payne - 1990
Hailed by the CIA as ‘the best in the world’, it is held in awe by its friends and feared by its foes. It can boast the most devoted, patriotic agents in the world. It was Mossad who pulled off the spectacular rescue of Israeli hostages from Entebbe and Mossad agents who pinpointed the target for Israeli bombers to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Since the 1940s, Mossad has been a crucial weapon in Israel’s constant struggle to survive. Now Ronald Payne has written the first full history of Mossad. It reads like a thriller, but every word is true. Here are the heroes, the dare-devils, the masters of intelligence, and their incredible stories of kidnappings, Nazi hunts, high-tech espionage, smuggling nuclear weapons and counter-terrorist operations. ‘Mossad: Israel’s Most Secret Past’ is a penetrating, gripping and suspense-filled account. ‘Brilliantly revealing’ – Daily Express Ronald Payne (1926-2013) was a distinguished newspaper correspondent who focussed on espionage and international crime. He began covering the Middle East in the 1950s, reporting on the Suez crisis and the 1973 Yom Kippur War for the Telegraph. He also conducted a well-publicised interview with Colonel Gaddafi. As a writer he released several books on terrorism and warfare, including ‘The Carlos Complex’ about Carlos the Jackal, and a bestselling book about the Falklands War. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance
Jim Al-Khalili - 2010
Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?
Why Israel is the Victim
David Horowitz - 2009
David Horowitz’s classic Why Israel is the Victim, updated by the author, sets the record straight about the basic truths of the Middle East conflict. In addition to restoring the authentic history of the region – a history of obsessive aggression first by Arab countries determined to physically annihilate the Jewish State and later by terror groups determined to destroy its will to survive and right to exist—this booklet brings the story up to date by showing the systematic way in which Hamas and Hezbollah, under Iran’s direction, have subverted peace in the Middle East. As Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield notes in his insightful introduction, this pamphlet “tells us why we should reject the “Blame Israel First” narrative that has so thoroughly saturated the mainstream media… It confronts the myth of Palestinian victimhood… and it delivers a rousing restatement of the true history of the hate that led us to all this.” America should be Israel’s protector. Instead, as David Horowitz notes, under the leadership of Barack Obama, it has become its prosecutor.
The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam
Fatema Mernissi - 1988
Convinced that the veil is a symbol of unjust male authority over women, in The Veil and the Male Elite, Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi aims to investigate the origins of the practice in the first Islamic community.
Challenging Destiny A Biography of Chhatrapati Shivaji
Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran - 2016
Darkness engulfs the Indian subcontinent. The 17th century is destined to be an era of brutal wars, incessant oppression, and physical and spiritual carnage in the name of religion. Shivaji, a warrior and thinker far ahead of his times, rises and renders a rousing dream - respect and dignity for human life, economic equity, and empowerment. Destiny does not favour him; he faces terribile odds - a fallen and defeated populace, the might of the Mughal Empire, and naval supremacy of the Western powers. Thus begins a battle of conflicting ideologies, contrasting belief systems, and sharply different visions of India - a stake is the future of most ancient civilization. Witness the beginnings of the momentous events that will send thunderbolts across centuries, the echoes of which still haunt the subcontinent.
From Shadow Party to Shadow Government: George Soros and the Effort to Radically Change America
John Perazzo - 2011
Since David Horowitz wrote “The Shadow Party” in 2007, there has been a major breakthrough in the progression of Soros’ plan to racially change American institutions – he has succeeded in subverting and taking over the Democratic Party itself. Though Soros has carefully hidden his goals under the cloak of his philanthropy, Horowitz and John Perazzo expose Soros’ radical agenda in this booklet and show how his philanthropies actually work to advance his leftwing causes. Understanding the Soros agenda is critical for understanding and defeating the Obama agenda, because they have, in effect, become one in the same.
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Norman G. Finkelstein - 2005
Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched exposé of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict.Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein’s answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history. Recalling Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial, published to great fanfare in 1984 but subsequently exposed as an academic hoax, he asks deeply troubling questions here about the periodic reappearance of spurious scholarship and the uncritical acclaim it receives. The most recent addition to this genre, Finkelstein argues, is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s bestseller, The Case for Israel.The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz’s assertions on Israel’s human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein argues that Dershowitz has misrepresented the facts.Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity
Tariq Ramadan - 2000
The book argues that Muslims, nurished by their own points of reference, can approach the modern epoch by adopting a specific social, political, and economic model that is linked to ethical values, a sense of finalities and spirituality. Rather than a modernism that tends to impose Westernization, it is a modernity that admits to the pluralism of civilizations, religions, and cultures.Table of Contents:ForewordIntroductionHistory of a ConceptThe Lessons of HistoryPart 1: At the shores of Transcendence: between God and ManPart 2: The Horizons of Islam: Between Man and the CommunityPart 3: Values and Finalities: The Cultural Dimension of the Civilizational Face to FaceConclusionAppendixIndexTariq Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor in Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University. He was named by TIME Magazine as one of the one hundred innovators of the twenty-first century.
Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House
Keith Koffler - 2017
Born to working-class Democrats in Virginia, Bannon has barrelled through the Navy, Harvard, Wall Street, and Hollywood; he is fluent in esoteric philosophies and political theories; and he has diagnosed the problem with today's America---the rot that has eaten away at working Americans' hopes, opportunities, and freedoms---and developed a winning strategy for taking America back.With inside information on Bannon's current White House projects and his relationships with other figures in the Trump orbit---and with President Trump himself---Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House is not only a three-dimensional guide to one of the most fascinating figures of modern American history; it's also a guide to understanding the Trump administration's plans for our future.
Inferno
James Nachtwey - 1999
Featuring brutally compassionate photographs taken from 1990-99, inspired by an overwhelming belief in the human possibility of change, this volume is a definitive selection from Nachtwey's astonishing portfolio. It documents today's conflicts and their victims, from Somalia's famine to genocide in Rwanda, from Romania's abandoned orphans and 'irrecoverables' to the lives of India's 'untouchables', from war in Bosnia to conflict in Chechnya. Inferno is an evocative visual insight into modern history, bringing it disturbingly close to our consciousness.
In a Time of Monsters: Travels Through a Middle East in Revolt
Emma Sky - 2019
She soon found herself back in the Middle East traveling through a region in revolt. In a Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the Islamic State; and the flight of refugees to Europe. With deep empathy for its people and an extensive understanding of the Middle East, Sky makes a complex region more comprehensible. A great storyteller and observational writer, Sky also reveals the ties that bind the Middle East to the West and how blowback from the West's interventions in the region contributed to the British vote to leave the European Union and to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror
Derek Chollet - 2008
The finger-on-the-button tension that had defined a generation was over, and it seemed that peace was at hand. The next twelve years rolled by in a haze of self-congratulation— what some now call a "holiday from history. "When that complacency shattered on September 11, 2001, setting the U.S. on a new and contentious path, confused Americans asked themselves: How did we get here?In America Between The Wars, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier examine how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Wall on 11/9 and the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today. Reflecting the authors' deep expertise and broad access to key players across the political spectrum, this book tells the story of a generation of leaders grappling with a moment of dramatic transformation—changing how we should think about the recent past, and uncovering important lessons for the future.
The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924
Benny Morris - 2019
By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia's Christian population.The years in question, the most violent in the recent history of the region, began during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II, continued under the Young Turks, and ended during the first years of the Turkish Republic founded by Ataturk. Yet despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post-World War I period, the nation's annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, mass rape, and brutal abduction. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation.Revelatory and impeccably researched, Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi's account is certain to transform how we see one of modern history's most horrific events.
The Tanks of Tammuz
Shabtai Teveth - 1968
They smashed through the Egyptian defences at Sinai. They swept the length and breadth of the peninsula to the banks of the Nile. They pulverised the Syrian fortress on the Golan Heights to win the battle for the west bank of the Jordan. During the Six Days War, the armoured units broke through the Sinai defences and smashed through the Syrian fortress. They also ultimately brought the battle to a quick conclusion. General Tal’s division, during the Six Days War, managed to breakthrough heavily fortified and defended areas in record breaking time. Being attached to General Tal’s division, and as a war correspondent who witnessed these events, Shabtai Teveth describes the dust, heat and peril of every engagement-from earliest border incidents to one of the biggest tank battles of all time on the scorching sands of the Sinai desert, when Egypt threw close to a thousand tanks against Israel’s solitary three divisions. Shabtai Teveth, born in 1925, was an Israeli historian and author. In 1950, he began working as a journalist and then became a polititical correspondent. In 2005, he won the Israel Prize for “lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State.” His other works include The Cursed Blessing: the story of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Moshe Dayan: the soldier, the man, the legend, and Kin’at David (David’s Jealousy), amongst many others. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
Triple Sticks: Tales of a Few Young Men in the 1960s
Bernie Fipp - 2010
The author assures us it is not!Three years before they came together, four young American men left their fraternities and college campuses for an adventure exceeding their imaginations. Wanting something more than the draft and unknown to each other, they chose Naval Aviation as the next step in their lives. Generally, they were better than their navy peers, all qualifying for high performance aircraft to be flown from steel decks over foreign seas. They would become the pointy end of the stick in aerial battles over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended patch of real estate in the history of aerial warfare. They were to do this in 1967, the year in which Naval Aviation experienced its greatest losses.These four young men, now Lieutenants Junior Grade, United States Navy, were ordered to Attack Squadron 34 to fly A4 Skyhawks into combat. They were assigned Junior Officer's stateroom 0111 aboard USS Intrepid, a venerable aircraft carrier with a distinguished history. This "bunkroom" better known to them as Triple Sticks was the repository for a log (in navy terms) or journal written by these four young aviators. Forty years later this log was the genesis of this memoir.In the lethal environment over the northern reaches of North Vietnam or ashore in the Officer's clubs and bars of Asia, the writing brings to life wonderful humor, bizarre behavior, vivid aerial battles, uncommon loyalty, anger, frustration and respect. One survived or did not according to his skill and luck.