Book picks similar to
Jerusalem by Amos Elon
history
non-fiction
middle-east
travel
A Short History of the Roman Mass
Michael Treharne Davies - 1997
Covers Low Mass, Sacramentaries, other Western Rites, etc. Highlights the reforms of Popes St. Gregory the Great (590-604) and St. Pius V (1566-1572). Says neither \"reform\" produced a \"new\" liturgy.
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership
Yehuda Avner - 2010
Employing time-honored literary devices of scene-setting, impressionistic description, and characterization, he restores to life episodes of war and peace as these amazing individuals, early leaders of Israel, grappled with one another and with the life-and-death decisions they were often called upon to make. In the author's eyes, Menachem Begin emerges as most exceptional, and much of the book is devoted to him. Based largely on personal notes, as well as on actual transcripts and correspondence, some of which are revealed here for the first time, the narrative reenacts how each of the leaders responded under conditions of acute stress - be it terror or war- and how their respective relationships unfolded with Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.
Saddam's Secrets
Georges Hormuz Sada - 2005
A truth-teller in a government that made the truth dangerous. A devout Christian in a Muslim country. And a man who would stand up for what was right?even at the risk of his own life.In this eye-opening exposé, General Sada shares his bizarre yet amazing journey as an insider to one of history's most sinister regimes. He also, for the first time, reveals the disturbing truth about Saddam's plots to destroy Israel, hide weapons of mass destruction and overtake the Arab world. As an eye witness to history, Sada paints a painfully truthful picture of Hussein and his country that is at once personal and alarming, truthful and compelling, candid and sobering. It is a story guaranteed to send shock waves around the world.
They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East
Mindy Belz - 2016
They threatened them with kidnapping. They promised to take their children. The message to these 'infidels' You have no place in Iraq. Pay a penalty to stay, leave, or be killed."Sweeping from Syria into Iraq, Islamic State fighters (ISIS) have been brutalizing and annihilating Christians. How? Why? Where did the terrorists come from, and what can be done to stop them? For more than a decade, journalist Mindy Belz has reported on the ground from the Middle East, giving her unparalleled access to the story no one wants to believe. In They Say We Are Infidels, she brings the stark reality of this escalating genocide to light, tracking the stories of real-life Christians who refuse to abandon their faith--even in the face of losing everything, including their lives.As Reading Lolita in Tehran did for Iran and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families did for Rwanda, They Say We Are Infidels shines light into the Middle East through the stories of everyday heroes and heroines who will not be silenced. A must-read for anyone seeking a firmer grasp on the complex dynamics at play in war-torn Iraq and Syria, They Say We Are Infidels is the eye-opening and revelatory testimony of a journalist who heads into a war zone--and is forever changed by the people she encounters there.
Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response
Aaron J. Klein - 2005
The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror and remains a scar on the collective conscience of the world.Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vows to track down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin’s words, “run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth.” A secret Mossad unit, code named Caesarea, is mobilized, a list of targets drawn up. Thus begins the Israeli response–a mission that unfolds not over months but over decades. The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one has known the real story. Until now.Award-winning journalist Aaron Klein’s incisive and riveting account tells for the first time the full story of Munich and the Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. With unprecedented access to Mossad agents and an unparalleled knowledge of Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth and misinformation that have permeated previous books, films, and magazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black September and other terrorist groups.Spycraft, secret diplomacy, and fierce detective work abound in a story with more drama than any fictional thriller. Burning questions are at last answered, including who was killed and who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and which were missed. Truths are revealed: the degree to which the Mossad targeted nonaffiliated Black September terrorists for assassination, the length and full scope of the operation (far greater than previously suspected), retributive acts against Israel, and much more. Finally, Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important counterterrorism campaigns in history.
The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
Alan Jacobs - 2018
Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally preparedfor their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflectivecritique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignoranceof one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power andlimitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 1859-2009
Gregory A. Wills - 2009
Unlike the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have remained stubbornly conservative, refusing to adapt their beliefs and practices to modernity's individualist and populist values. Instead, they have held fast to traditional orthodoxy in such fundamental areas as biblical inspiration, creation, conversion, and miracles. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denomination's conservatism and limited the seminary's ability to stray from it. In a set of circumstances in which the seminary played a central part, Southern Baptists' populist values bolstered traditional orthodoxy rather than diminishing it. In the end, says Wills, their populism privileged orthodoxy over individualism. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity. Wills's study sheds important new light on the denomination that has played - and continues to play - such a central role in our national history.
American Interior: The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, fuelled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America
Gruff Rhys - 2014
In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more.
American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts.
Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.
Leap Year
Steve Erickson - 1989
He paints a portrait of a country already far beyond its own crossroads.
Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's
R.A. Scotti - 2006
A. Scotti traces the defining event of a glorious epoch: the building of St. Peter's Basilica. Begun by the ferociously ambitious Pope Julius II in 1506, the endeavor would span two tumultuous centuries, challenge the greatest Renaissance masters--Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante--and enrage Martin Luther. By the time it was completed, Shakespeare had written all of his plays, the Mayflower had reached Plymouth--and Rome had risen with its astounding basilica to become Europe's holy metropolis. A dazzling portrait of human achievement and excess, Basilica is a triumph of historical writing.
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine
Joan Peters - 1984
Book by Peters, Joan
For Two Thousand Years
Mihail Sebastian - 1934
Spending his days walking the streets and his nights drinking and gambling, meeting revolutionaries, zealots, lovers and libertines, he adjusts his eyes to the darkness that falls over Europe, and threatens to destroy him. Mihail Sebastian's 1934 masterpiece, now translated into English for the first time, was written amid the anti-Semitism which would, by the end of the decade, force him out of his career and turn his friends and colleagues against him. For Two Thousand Years is a prescient, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, broken layers of memory and the terrible forces of history.
What Were the Crusades?
Jonathan Riley-Smith - 1977
Since then, a number of historians have built on Jonathan Riley-Smith's original conclusions. Now in its fourth edition, this classic starting point for the study of the crusading movement has been updated to take into account the latest developments in the field.What Were the Crusades? elucidates key ideas and institutions which have been neglected in the past demonstrates, through the analysis of European campaigns, that the movement was not confined to expeditions launched to recover the Holy Land - or to defend the Christian presence there - and shows that it continued, in one form or another, into the eighteenth century and perhaps beyond draws attention to the increasing interest of historians in the motivation of crusaders now includes material on a child crusader and concludes with a short discussion of the current effects of aggressive Pan-Islamism features a new map illustrating the different theatres of war Original in its conception, this essential guide is a contribution of major importance to crusading scholarship. In its clear and concise treatment of the issues, it remains an unequalled introduction to the subject for students and general readers alike.
Augustine: A New Biography
James J. O'Donnell - 1985
But in this book, suffused with the methods (though thankfully not the tortured vocabulary) of postmodern critical suspicion, the Confessions is more hindrance than help at seeing the "many Augustines" who have been lost behind Augustine's own self-presentation. The Augustines that O'Donnell sketches include the aspiring social climber who transferred his ambitions from society to church; the bitter and dogged polemicist; and "Don Quixote of Hippo," whose "fantasy world of earliest Christianity has come eerily to be real." O'Donnell's pace is quick, his writing is sharp and there are lively and provocative interpretations on nearly every page. But his jaundiced portrait does not quite seem to do justice to the African bishop's perennial appeal, which O'Donnell acknowledges in characteristically backhanded fashion: "Call it codependency or Stockholm syndrome at its mildest; call it religious partisanship at its most extreme, but even Augustine's severest modern critics find something attractive or fascinating about the man and his work." Readers of this book will certainly wonder why. For O'Donnell, it seems, familiarity has bred contempt.
Dispatches from Bitter America: A Gun Toting, Chicken Eating Son of a Baptist’s Culture War Stories
Todd Starnes - 2012
Along the way, he shares exclusive interviews with political commentator Sean Hannity, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, cooking sensation Paula Deen, and pop singer Amy Grant, always hoping to go from bitter to better.Endorsements:"In Dispatches From Bitter America this 'Great American' finds that not only is our American way of life under attack, but also that most Americans do in fact love God, this country, their families, and are anything but bitter!"Sean Hannity, New York Times best-selling author, FOX News host of Hannity"Todd Starnes combines sound research with his signature wit to tell the stories of regular Americans who are standing up to a secular movement that seeks to remove all religious expression from the public square. This is a compelling book that puts our entire existence into the perspective of eternity."Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council"You will cheer for America while laughing your head off!"Matt Patrick, News/Talk 740 KTRH in Houston, TX"Todd Starnes captures the sentiments many Americans feel as they helplessly watch the traditional values they grew up with being stomped out and over-ruled by political correctness. Todd's stories will strike a chord, whether it's 'The War on Christmas,' 'Tag, You're Out,' or 'The Chocolate Czar.' Brownies now banned from school? Bah humbug."Gretchen Carlson, co-host, Fox and Friends"Dispatches from Bitter America features Todd Starnes at his best. With his trademark wit, Todd tackles questions being asked by Americans who wonder what is happening to our country. Starnes manages to get to the heart of the matter in a way that is both packed with information and sprinkled with humor. Todd Starnes is a man of immense faith, madly in love with our country, and endowed by his Creator with the unique talent to tell a story like very few can. Simply put, Dispatches From Bitter America is the best book that I have read this year!"Jeff Katz, morning host, Talk Radio 1200 in Boston, MA"Todd Starnes is a masterful storyteller. In Dispatches of a Bitter America, he offers commentary on today's current events through the lens of a self-proclaimed gun toting, fried-chicken-eating son of a Baptist. Todd has always been one of my favorite news personalities and good friends. Now he is one of my favorite storytellers. Warning: don't start reading this book unless you are prepared to finish it. It's just that good."Thom S. Rainer, president and CEO, LifeWay Christian Resources