Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey. Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi - rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman's story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious -- and stratified -- society. He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north. Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia's biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis. As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald's, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a "rainbow bridge" that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman's star from rising. Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West -- lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.

    It needs you and me to understand and appreciate the contributions of our brothers and sisters in faith. However, too often, our blind spots lead to divisions and disagreements, preventing God's people from testifying to his grace with one voice.In this provocative book, Collin Hansen helps us view our differences as opportunities to more effectively engage a needy world with the love of Christ. Highlighting the diversity of thought, experience, and personality that God has given to his people, Blind Spots lays the foundation for a new generation of Christians eager to cultivate a courageous, compassionate, and commissioned church.

    More than half a billion women live their entire lives peeking out from behind heavy veils. Theirs is a mysterious, misunderstood life often lived without hope and under great persecution.This groundbreaking book is written by evangelical Christian women who have seen the other side. Ranging from missionaries in Islamic countries, to former reporters and columnists, the contributors give a powerful and unsilenceable voice to the women behind the veil.Written by women with such deep knowledge of Muslim life that some of the identities have been obscured for their protection A discussion of the real women of Islam--not the veils, protocols, and rules

    She learned to give to them at an early age. But after her beloved brother Darrell's senseless killing by police 30 years ago, she began giving more, unconsciously seeking to help other men the way she couldn't help Darrell. Brothers (and Me) navigates Britt's life through her relationships with men-resulting in a tender, funny and heartbreaking exploration of universal issues of gender and race. It asks: Why, for so long, did Britt-like millions of seemingly self-aware women-rarely put herself first? With attuned storytelling and hard-wrought introspection, Britt finds that even the sharpest woman may need reminding that giving to others requires giving to oneself.

    But Russia squirms under the pressure of any attempt to pin it down. In the midst of social and financial upheaval, the more Parker sought answers the more the questions kept coming: What was Russia? How did it work? How did people live? How could they eat kholodetz (meat jelly)? Did love mean something different to them than it meant to us? Why did so many women leave the country to marry strangers? What good did knowing Pushkin by heart do them? Why did the police keep robbing him?The four years at the heart of this book focus largely on the period between 2008 and 2012 and the revealing friendship Parker made with a young barkeep and draft dodger named Igor. The book became the story of Igor, as a metaphor for Russia, in crisis. While Igor is not the model Perestroika generation man nor some kind of Putin-era everyman, he is, like The Big Lebowski, a man for his time and place. What Parker has created is the story of Igor as refracting mirror for the story of Russia, told with intelligence, humour and no small amount of misadventure.

    Here [St Peter’s] Popes with black faces and golden crowns are wallowing twice life-size in the titanic folds of marble tablecloths, their ormolu fringes festooning upon the arms of graceful skeletons to disclose some Alice-in-Wonderland door or the grim hinges of some sepulchral grill . . .  Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana, published in 1937, Robert Byron had developed his considerable writing skills on this travel book which has not been in print since 1926. It describes a journey Byron made with three friends, driving across Europe between two world wars, and mixes political and historical analysis with architectural insights, classical scholarship, and the day-to-day adventures of three young and not very experienced travelers. For fans of Robert Byron’s work this will be a discovery; for others it will be an introduction. Includes nine original sketches made by the author during his travels.

    The sun was shining, and in the distance could be heard the sound of gunfire. The Bosnian civil war had finally come to this once peaceful city of 112,000, where Muslims, Croats, and Serbs had lived side by side for centuries.

    But who does it really belong to? Scripture, history, and contemporary politics add to the volatile conflict in the Middle East. Whose Promised Land?, now in a fully revised and updated fifth edition, provides an evenhanded approach to this complex dilemma. The book begins with the history of the territory, explaining the development of the conflict and the complexity of the issues. The second section surveys biblical teaching on the theme of the land, both from the Old Testament point of view and the perspective of Jesus and his followers. Building on the analysis of history and the biblical studies, the final part examines the major contemporary forces affecting the conflict today. Unlike many evangelical Christian books on the topic, Whose Promised Land? does not automatically assume a pro-Israel stance, but seeks to present an honest appraisal of modern Israel while clearly delineating the interrelated issues surrounding the crisis in the Middle East.

    The end result of this conversation, Dark hopes, will be a better understanding that there is a reality more important, more lasting, and more infinite than the cultures to which we belong, the reality of the kingdom of God.

    Do you have to sell your soul? Not even close. This book can be your guide, an unexpected friend, even a prophecy for your future. Funny information-packed text, illustrative charts and enlightening side-bars will deliver priceless insights into men, their motivations and their inspirations. Making Sense of Men will teach you: -Why men pursue some women for sex and others for heart-felt relationships -How to tell when a man is emotionally involved -How to inspire generosity and attentiveness in all men -How you can be strong and successful - without discouraging men

    The X-rated intellectual and author of Susie Bright's Sexual Reality takes on Dan Quayle, Madonna, and the GOP in a collection of previously published essays, interviews, and reviews that also includes new writing by the sexpert.

    Hardly anyone he knew didn't have an opinion in the debate over owning guns. Why was a constitutionally protected right so heavily debated, and who exactly as these folks that own guns? "I began to wonder who these seventy or so million Americans were, how they lived and what was important to them. I set out to photographs as many gun owners as I could and ask them one question: "Why do you own a gun."Cassidy traveled over 20,000 miles, crisscrossing the country to meet with gun owners in their homes. Cassidy's photo essays create a powerful, thought provoking and sometimes startling view of gun ownership in the U.S. These "everyman" portraits, and the accompanying views of gun owners, fashion a riveting and provocative hardcover book.

    In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South--one poem, Kith, exploring that strange bedfellow of kin--the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don't know / are his dead.Whether it's the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them--of us--poetry can save.

    Also, never has there been a new generation of Latinas so ready to say what they mean and even criticize the Latina generation that preceded them. Until now.In Border-Line Personalities, twenty writers share their poignant and wickedly funny stories about fighting with their mothers, struggling with speaking Spanish, and dealing with the men who've done them wrong, among a myriad of other topics. In the end, each essay encompasses a different point of view, lending credence to the theory that no one can label any one item, idea, or person more Latina than the other.Questions posed to Latinas of all ages in Border-Line Personalities:Why do many of us often feel more American than Latina?How important is Spanish, really?Do we all really fit under one cultural umbrella?When thinking about having children, do we really have to consider being stay-at-home moms as most of us were raised to believe was law, or can Latinas even consider the possibility of raising children while working?What do we do when we fall in love with someone (male or female) outside our culture?

    In his debut, Hustle, Martinez offered a kaleidoscopic coming-of-age narrative replete with teen shootings and car-jackings, uncertain forays into sex, and the ongoing violence of colonialism upon Latino communities in San Diego. Emerging from the fray, the poet is left to wonder: Who am I now? In Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, the speaker assembles a bricolage self-portrait from the fractures of the past. Sliding between scholarly diction and slangy vernacular, studded with references to Greek mythology and hip-hop, Martinez's poems showcase a versatility of language and a wild-hearted poetic energy that is thoughtful, vulnerable, and distinctly American.David Tomas Martinez is a recipient of a 2017 NEA fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Verlaine Poetry Prize, a CantoMundo fellowship, and the Stanley P. Young Fellowship from Breadloaf. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle (2014, Sarabande Books) received the New England Book Festival's prize in poetry, the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and $10,000 as honorable mention from the Antonio Cisneros Del Moral Prize. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Tin House, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Martinez lives in Brooklyn, NY.