Book picks similar to
Guardians of God: Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban by Mona Kanwal Sheikh
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Saigon Has Fallen
Peter Arnett - 2015
Arnett’s clear-eyed coverage incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson and officials on all sides of the conflict. Writing candidly and vividly about his gambles and glories, Arnett also shares his fears and fights in reporting against the backdrop of war. Arnett places readers at the historic pivot-points of Vietnam: covering Marine landings, mountaintop battles, Saigon’s decline and fall, and the safe evacuation of a planeload of 57 infants in the midst of chaos. Peter Arnett’s sweeping view and his frank, descriptive, and dramatic writing brings the Vietnam War to life in a uniquely insightful way for this year’s 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He later went on to TV-reporting fame covering the Gulf War for CNN. Includes 21 dramatic photographs from the AP Archive and the personal collection of Peter Arnett. About the Author Peter Arnett started as an intern at his local newspaper at age 18, but knew even then his interest was in covering the world. Less than a decade later, he was traveling the globe for The Associated Press, the first of several major American news organizations he would work for. His Vietnam War coverage for the AP won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Arnett joined CNN at its birth in the early 1980s, earning a television Emmy for his live television coverage of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. Born in New Zealand in 1934, he later became an American citizen and now lives in Fountain Valley, CA. About The Associated Press The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.
Diary of a Legionnaire. My Life in the French Foreign Legion
Gareth Carins - 2007
He experienced at first hand the extremes of human nature, witnessing both the brutal cruelty shown by some Legionnaires in the name of tradition, to the personal sacrifices shown by others. Along the way he met many of the fascinating characters that come from all corners of the world to serve in the ranks of the Foreign Legion. DIARY OF A LEGIONNAIRE is a candid and eye opening insight into this mysterious army. Told through Gareth's exciting and at times humorous adventures during the first eighteen months of his service, as we follow him from the brutality of basic training, to the realities of combat in the jungles of West Africa
Born to Hate Reborn to Love: A Spiritual Odyssey from Head to Heart
Klaus Kenneth - 2001
Repelled and repulsed by those who ostensibly represented the Christian faith in his juvenescence, Klaus Kenneth naturally looked elsewhere for the solution to his lonely and tortured existence. In his sincere search for escape from rejection and abuse, Klaus found himself on an odyssey that took him around the world several times, lured him into a vortex of pleasure and power, and initiated him into the great philosophies and religious traditions of our times. Having tried it all, and reaching the very brink of the abyss of despair and the desire for nonexistence, Klaus encounters the One whom he had never thought to look for, the One that he had always discounted: the great I AM, the God of Love and healing, the God of regeneration and eternal life.Klaus KennethKlaus Kenneth was born in a small village west of Prague (Czech Republic), and lives with his wife in Switzerland. In addition to German, his mother tongue, he is fluent in English and French. Desirous to share his remarkable story, Klaus spends most of his time on tour in Europe and the USA, bearing witness to his unexpected discovery of Hope and Love.Published here for the first time in English, Born to Hate, Reborn to Love is already a best seller in several other languages.
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid - 2000
The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp focus in this enormously interesting and revealing book. It is the only authoritative account of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan available to English language readers.Based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, Rashid offers unparalleled firsthand information. He explains how the growth of Taliban power has already created severe instability in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and five Central Asian republics. He describes the Taliban' s role as a major player in a new "Great Game"a competition among Western countries and companies to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The author also discusses the controversial changes in American attitudes toward the Talibanfrom early support to recent bombings of Osama Bin Laden's hideaway and other Taliban-protected terrorist basesand how they have influenced the stability of the region.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Robert Fisk - 2005
A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
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...
The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Kim Barker - 2011
Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent—she is candid, self-deprecating, laugh-out-loud funny. At first an awkward newbie in Afghanistan, she grows into a wisecracking, seasoned reporter with grave concerns about our ability to win hearts and minds in the region. In The Taliban Shuffle, Barker offers an insider’s account of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, chronicling the years after America’s initial routing of the Taliban, when we failed to finish the job. When Barker arrives in Kabul, foreign aid is at a record low, electricity is a pipe dream, and of the few remaining foreign troops, some aren’t allowed out after dark. Meanwhile, in the vacuum left by the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban is regrouping as the Afghan and Pakistani governments flounder. Barker watches Afghan police recruits make a travesty of practice drills and observes the disorienting turnover of diplomatic staff. She is pursued romantically by the former prime minister of Pakistan and sees adrenaline-fueled colleagues disappear into the clutches of the Taliban. And as her love for these hapless countries grows, her hopes for their stability and security fade. Swift, funny, and wholly original, The Taliban Shuffle unforgettably captures the absurdities and tragedies of life in a war zone.
The Edge: Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End?
Mark Urban - 2015
Meanwhile, growing nationalism is hampering international cooperation and fuelling conflict everywhere. The west's will - as well as its capability - to shape the world is ebbing away.Beset by economic woes, western countries are continuing the post-Cold War process of disarmament at the very moment that many believe a new Cold War is starting. NATO members have compared Vladimir Putin's foreign policy to that of Adolf Hitler, newly empowered groups such as ISIS, not to mention some governments, are tearing up the rulebook of acceptable international behaviour, and the military prowess that the western world once regarded as its prerogative is being dwarfed by countries like India and China.Tightly argued by Newsnight's diplomatic and defence editor Mark Urban, THE EDGE is a sharp polemic that breaks new ground in examining the workings and consequences of these geo-political tectonics, and shows just how rapidly the balance of power has been upended.
Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria
Sam Dagher - 2019
Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -- an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. By drawing on his own reporting experience in Damascus and exclusive interviews with Tlass, Dagher takes readers within palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region.Dagher shows how one of the world's most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Fatema Mernissi - 1994
"I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco . . . " So begins Fatima Mernissi in this illuminating narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth -- women who, without access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination. A beautifully written account of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex, Dreams of Trespass illuminates what it was like to be a modern Muslim woman in a place steeped in tradition.
When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone
James Montague - 2008
James Montague travelled there for three years, observing the region's cultures and politics through the prism of football and interviewing all the major teams along the way. He soon realised that to understand the game there is to understand its people. For as much as football forms an unlikely common thread between different countries, the sport also reflects what is unique in the national characters of those who play, support and organise it.When Friday Comes is an insightful and humorous account of Montague's journey, during which he gets stoned with the Yemeni FA, harangues Iran's Deputy President at the World Cup, has a gun pulled on him by genocidal Lebanese football fans, encounters a rioting group of fanatical young Jews singing 'I'm West Ham 'til I Die' in mockney English and was made to strip and then dance for the Iraqi national team.This is a compelling travel memoir that will enlighten, surprise and entertain football fans everywhere.
Rosewater: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival
Maziar Bahari - 2011
Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.For the Bahari family, wars, coups, and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar’s father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. Alone in his cell at Evin Prison, fearing the worst, Maziar draws strength from his memories of the courage of his father and sister in the face of torture, and hears their voices speaking to him across the years. He dreams of being with Paola in London, and imagines all that she and his rambunctious, resilient eighty-four-year-old mother must be doing to campaign for his release. During the worst of his encounters with Rosewater, he silently repeats the names of his loved ones, calling on their strength and love to protect him and praying he will be released in time for the birth of his first child. A riveting, heart-wrenching memoir, Rosewater offers insight into the past seventy years of regime change in Iran, as well as the future of a country where the democratic impulses of the youth continually clash with a government that becomes more totalitarian with each passing day. An intimate and fascinating account of contemporary Iran, it is also the moving and wonderfully written story of one family’s extraordinary courage in the face of repression.Now a major motion picture directed by Jon Stewart - Previously published as Then They Came for Me.
The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District
Louise Brown - 2005
The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it. Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
Islam: Its Meaning and Message
Khurshid Ahmad - 1976
It covers the whole spectrum of its beliefs, values, social principles, cultural institutions, and contemporary problems. Edited by Khurshid Ahmad, this book brings together leading Muslim scholarship and covers ideology, culture, the concept of worship, social justice, women in Islam, political theory in Islam, and the objectives of the Islamic economic order. It also discusses what Islam gave to humanity, the Western world and its challenges to Islam, and Islam and the crisis of the modern world.
The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures
Louis Theroux - 2005
Or April, the Neo-Nazi bringing up her twin daughters Lamb and Lynx (who have just formed a white-power folk group for kids called Prussian Blue), and her youngest daughter, Dresden. For a decade now, Louis Theroux has been making programs about offbeat characters on the fringes of U.S. society. Now he revisits the people who have most intrigued him to try to discover what motivates them, and why they believe the things they believe. From his Las Vegas base (where else?), Theroux calls on these assorted dreamers, schemers, and outlaws--and in the process finds out a little about the workings of his own mind. What does it mean, after all, to be weird, or "to be yourself"? Do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us? And is there something particularly weird about Americans? America, prepare yourself for a hilarious look in the mirror that has already taken the rest of the English-speaking world by storm: "Paul Theroux's son writes with just as clear an eye for character and place as his father.... And he's funny.... Theroux's final analysis of American weirdness is true and new." -- Literary Review (England)