As the petroleum minister for Saudi Arabia and the leading force behind OPEC, he was the biggest player in the world's biggest business - oil.His is a story of ultimate political power, of the Middle East, of the "oil weapon" and the embargoes, of a brilliant young Saudi lawyer who emerged from the desert sands to walk comfortably through the halls of power in Washington DC, in London, in Paris, and throughout much of the rest of the world.It is also the story of a man who, in 1975, faced sudden death not once but twice. His mentor and lifelong support, the legendary King Faisal, was shot dead at his feet; and nine months later Yamani himself was kidnapped by the terrorist who was known as, "Carlos the Jackal," only narrowly escaping with his life.Co-starring Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Qaddafi, Jimmy Carter, the CIA, the Shah of Iran, Ronald Reagan and Nat King Cole, this is the up close and personal story of a man who strode across the world's stage a superstar in the media, was heralded as "the best friend the West had in the Middle East," and yet became the face of the oil embargoes that threatened to cripple Western economies.A brilliant and enormously charming man who could move markets with a few simple words, Sheikh Yamani earned the respect of political leaders in the West while suffering the jealousy of kings and princes back home. His sudden and abrupt firing in October 1986 made front page headlines throughout the world.Written in 1988 with the unprecedented cooperation of Sheikh Yamani - meeting with him regularly over the course of a year in five countries - plus hundreds of interviews with the people who knew him best, Jeffrey Robinson's gripping and intimate account opens a door to the very heart of one of the world's most controversial and fascinating statesmen.Heralded in the West as "the best book ever written about the oil business," and banned in Saudi Arabia when it was first published, this #1 international bestseller is now, finally, available as an eBook for the first time.*** "A sizzler" - Today*** "Bestselling writer Jeffrey Robinson has taken the lid off Yamani's life" - Sunday Express*** "Rich in entertaining anecdote" - Financial Times*** "Superb" - The Sunday Times*** "Robinson provides the reader with a portrait of a man who, while claiming he was nothing more than a simple Bedouin, became a deft politician and media personality indelibly associated in the public mind with the rise in OPEC economic power and Saudi Arabia's leading position in global oil production" - Washington Report*** "In crisp, straightforward sentences, Robinson describes how Ahmed Zaki Yamani's close relationship with King Faisal, and his own urbane intelligence, made him the dominant industry figure worldwide" - Publishers Weekly*** "Yamani emerges from the book as a man of intelligence and charm, deeply devoted to his family and his Muslim faith, who rose from a Mecca boyhood to become a jet-setting world figure and custodian of one-third of the non-communist world's oil" - Houston Post*** "Riveting, fast paced" - Globe and Mail*** "Robinson weaves a fascinating tale" - San Francisco Chronicle*** "A colorful, well rounded biography." - Philadelphia Inquirer*** "Oil gagsters were referring to the hot book as "the OPEC version of the Andy Warhol Diaries" - Liz Smith*** "A Fascinating portrait of this master politician" - Wall Street Journal

    In 1949, a controversial best-seller in Israel, Tom Segev draws on thousands of declassified documents along with personal diaries and correspondence to reconstruct the unvarnished story of Israel's first year.Segev reveals the lofty aspirations that guided the state's leaders as well as the darker side of the Zionist utopia: the friction between the early settlers and the immigrants, the lack of good-faith negotiations with the Arabs; the clash between religious and secular factions; the daily collision of the Zionist myth with the severe realities of life in the new state. Unflinching in its observations, this bold chronicle is indispensible for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confront--and divide--Israeli society.

    But, throughout his career, Robert Maxwell also nurtured another, more driving, and—until now—altogether hidden ambition, and that was to spy for Israel's Mossad. In the end, as Gordon Thomas, an author who has long been trolling the murky waters of international intelligence, shows in this gripping narrative, the conflict between the tycoon's public interests and spy's secret pursuits led to his mystifying death, officially by drowning, in November 1991, offshore of the Canary Islands. According to Thomas's well-placed sources in Israel, Washington, and London, Maxwell first came into Mossad's orbit in the 1970s, when the crack Israeli spy organization stole from the United States its most sophisticated piece of intelligence-gathering software, Enhanced Promis. Of it Mossad made an electronic Trojan horse, secretly amassing strictly classified information from inside the very organizations worldwide to which they were selling it. Mossad's representative for these extremely sensitive transactions costing tens of millions of dollars in China, Russia, India, and twenty other countries was Robert Maxwell. Only Maxwell was also helping himself to some of Mossad's profits—as well as 750 million from his employees' pension fund—in desperate attempts to maintain his empire and to meet the demands of increasingly intolerant creditors. Aboard his yacht that November night in 1991 Maxwell no doubt still clung to the hope of a bailout by Mossad. But Mossad's spy masters could not afford to smile on blackmail. This book reveals all the shocking reasons why. Eight pages of black-and-white photographs add to this astonishing tale of international intrigue, espionage, the Mossad, and murder.

    The men here, those who have escaped prison or the battlefields, worry over making ends meet, tend their tattered pride, join the resistance. The women are left to be breadwinners and protectors, too. Nazmiyeh is the matriarch, the center of a household of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, whose lives threaten to spin out of control with every personal crisis, military attack, or political landmine. Her brother’s granddaughter Nur is stuck in America; her own daughter’s son, traumatized in an Israeli assault, slips into another kind of exile; her daughter has cancer and no access to medicine. Their neighbor, the Beekeeper’s wife, will extract the marijuana resin to shrink her tumor, but it is also Nazmiyeh’s large heart and zest for life that heals, that will even call Nur back from the broken promise of America and set her on a new path. All Nazmiyeh’s loved ones will return to her, and ultimately journey further, to that place between the sky and water where all is as it once was, and where all will meet again.Born of a troubling history that continues to rage forth and claim its dead, The Blue Between Sky and Water is a novel of survival and of the vivid, powerful women who manage to enlarge and enliven the everyday. It is a novel for our time—and one that is also timeless.

    The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined--a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides. Who is right, who is wrong--who is the guard, who is truly the prisoner?

    His beloved niece Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. That tragedy propelled Peled onto a journey of discovery. It pushed him to re-examine many of the beliefs he had grown up with, as the son and grandson of leading figures in Israel's political-military elite, and transformed him into a courageous and visionary activist in the struggle for human rights and a hopeful, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In The General's Son, Peled writes about growing up in Jerusalem in the heart of the group that ruled the then-young country, Israel. He describes the path he took to his belief in peace between the two peoples living in the Holy Land. And he paints numerous touching portraits of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists he has worked with in rcent years.

    Better to have hostile identities framed by democracy than democrats indifferent to identity.In a vigorous, insightful challenge to the left and right alike, Natan Sharansky, as he has proved repeatedly, is at the leading edge of the issues that frame our times.

    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.

    He knows a lot about politics, a lot about foreign policy, and, crucially, is unusually shrewd in understanding how they interact. Here's hoping that his new book will introduce him to an even wider audience. Once you discover him, you'll be hooked.""--E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and Why Americans Hate Politics""Matthew Yglesias is one of a handful of bloggers that I make a point of reading every day. Heads in the Sand is a smart, vital book that urges Democrats to stop evading the foreign-policy debate and to embrace the old principles of international liberalism--to be right and also to win.""--Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power""Reading foreign policy tomes is seldom included among life's pleasures, but Yglesias has concocted a startling exception. Heads in the Sand is not just a razor-sharp analysis cum narrative of the politics of national security in general and the Iraq war in particular, it's also an enthralling and often very funny piece of writing. Though he administers strong antidotes to the haplessness of his fellow Democrats and liberals, there's more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.""--Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, The New Yorker, and author of Politics: Observations and ArgumentsFast-rising political commentator Matthew Yglesias reveals the wrong-headed foreign policy stance of conservatives, neocons, and the Republican Party for what it is--aggressive nationalism. Writing with wit, passion, and keen insight, Yglesias reminds us of the rich tradition of liberal internationalism that, developed by Democrats, was used with great success by both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than fifty years. He provides a starting point for politicians, policymakers, pundits, and citizens alike to return America to its role as leader of a peace-loving and cooperative international community.

    When President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous warning about the dangers of the military industrial complex, he never would have dreamed that a company could accumulate the kind of power and influence now wielded by this behemoth company.As a full-service weapons maker, Lockheed Martin receives over $25 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. From aircraft and munitions, to the abysmal Star Wars missile defense program, to the spy satellites that the NSA has used to monitor Americans’ phone calls without their knowledge, Lockheed Martin’s reaches into all areas of US defense and American life. William Hartung’s meticulously researched history follows the company’s meteoric growth and explains how this arms industry giant has shaped US foreign policy for decades.

    Who benefited from the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine? Why did President Woodrow Wilson order the manifest of the torpedoed Lusitania hidden in the archives of the U.S. Treasury? After the official inquiry into the Pearl Harbor attack, why did Admiral Kimmel and General Short - the commanders at Pearl Harbor - want to be court-martialed? Why was the Soviet Union given control of North Korea after World War II, when the Soviets did nothing to win the war in the Pacific? What did Congressional Medal of Honor recipient James Stockdale reveal about Tonkin Gulf (the event used to justify intervention in Vietnam)? How did "Operation Rockingham" lead America into the Iraq war? Since its founding in 1921, what small organization has produced 21 Secretaries of Defense/War, 19 Treasury Secretaries, 18 Secretaries of State, and 16 CIA directors? How did Jimmy Carter go from a generally unknown figure to Presidential nominee in just seven months? Why has America had decades of destructive inflation (understated recently by the Consumer Price Index), when there was zero NET inflation from the days of the Pilgrims until the early 20th century? Why did the Vietnam War last 14 years - and end in defeat - when it took us only 3 and 1/2 years to win World War II? What did the head of the Ford Foundation tell Congressional investigator Norman Dodd that made him "nearly fall off the chair"? Is it possible that many kings and other monarchs of past centuries were not as evil as they've been portrayed? What American capitalists were given landing rights for their private jets in Moscow - at the height of the Cold War? What KGB defector predicted glasnost five years in advance - yet was ignored by the major media? Who is at the top of the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill? Why was the USS Liberty attacked in 1967, and why was there no Congressional investigation? The official explanation of 9-11 - where do we BEGIN to name the holes? Were the Beatles a set-up? Who financed ecumenism and the decline of Christian faith? What are world elitists saying about population control? What are courageous doctors revealing about vaccines that the major media won't report? Does weather control go beyond seeding clouds? What is behind the recent spike in weather disasters? How did the Establishment trick conservatives into supporting its "free trade" agenda, destroying millions of U.S. jobs? Who's pouring billions of dollars into the "green" movement? 1984 - the amazing ways in which Orwell got the future right. And how does ALL this tie together? If you are one of those who senses that something just isn't right with the explanations we are given for wars, our dying economy, and other world events, this book may be just right for you. Countless lies have been planted in the corporate-controlled media to benefit the rich and the few; these lies have become "fact" through the mechanism of frequent repetition. Refuting such lies with credibility requires in-depth analysis. Therefore, beware of reviews of this book which attempt to debunk it by pulling a sentence or idea out of context. Read the book for yourself. Truth Is a Lonely Warrior is a ticket to de-brainwashing. 341 Pages. Fully indexed. This book is also available for instant download in a Kindle edition with many hyperlinks that can be clicked to access supporting material. This book can be gifted directly from Amazon to anyone you think might benefit from it. The author's website is www.jamesperloff.com Visit YouTube for Bill McNally's interview of James Perloff on Truth Is a Lonely Warrio

    But then Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and sealed off Iraq's borders to every man of military age -- including Shant. Suddenly forced onto the front lines, his two-week visit turned into a nightmare that lasted for ten years. 1001 Nights in Iraq presents a human story that provides unique insight into a country and culture that we only get a hint of in the headlines. After surviving the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War, Shant was then forced to fight on the front lines of Desert Storm without being given the proper equipment, including a gun, but miraculously survived to be captured by the Americans and become a POW. He underwent starvation, heavy interrogations, and solitary confinement, but what broke him in the end was his love affair with a female American soldier. Yet throughout this whole ordeal, Shant never lost his respect for people, his faith in God, or his sense of humor.

     Randolph Spencer-Churchill was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Member of Parliament between 1940 to 1945. He served with the 4th Queen's Own Hussars during the Second World War and later worked as a journalist. He was the author of several works of non-fiction, including the first two volumes of the official biography of his father. Winston Spencer-Churchill was the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill. He served as a member of British Parliament between 1970 and 1997. He was the author of five works of non-fiction, while he also compiled and edited Never Give In!, a collection of the Best of Sir Winston Churchill's speeches.

    Over three decades he has interviewed and investigated some of the most professional, dangerous and ruthless killers in Ireland. Now Dillon explores their personalities, motivations and bizarre crimes.Many of Ireland's assassins learned their trade in fields and on hillsides in remote parts of Ireland, while others were trained in the Middle East or with Basque separatist terrorists in Spain. Some were one-target-one-shot killers, like the sniper who terrorised the inhabitants of Washington State in the autumn of 2002, while others were bombers skilled in designing the most sophisticated explosive devices and booby traps. Another more powerful group of 'trigger men' were the influential figures in the shadows, who were experts in motivating the killers under their control. All of these men, whether they squeezed the trigger on a high-powered rifle, set the timer on a bomb or used their authority to send others out to commit horrific and unspeakable acts of cruelty, are featured in this book. The Trigger Men takes the reader inside the labyrinthine world of terrorist cells and highly classified counter-terrorism units of British Military Intelligence. The individual stories are described in gripping, unflinching detail and show how the terrorists carried out their ghastly work. Dillon also explores the ideology of the cult of the gunmen and the greed and hatred that motivated assassins in their killing sprees. There are penetrating insights into the mindset of the most infamous assassins: their social and historical conditioning, their callousness......

    Using thousands of previously top-secret documents and interviews with hundreds of current and former spies, Loftus and Aarons, both veteran investigators, Nazi-hunters, and authors, present a compelling narrative.The authors demonstrate that numerous Western countries, especially the United States and Great Britain, have conducted repeated and willful spying missions on Palestine and later Israel over many decades. While on the surface these two countries and others profess to be ardent allies of Israel, they work, in fact, through their intelligence services to betray Israel's secrets to the Arabs. Their motive: oil and multinational profits, which must be attained at any price through international covert policies.The pageant of characters appearing in this narrative is vast and shocking. This is not only a compelling work of history, but also a volume whose grave allegations will be debated for years to come.