Kurdistan is an invisible nation, and the Kurds the largest ethnic group on Earth without a homeland, comprising some 25 million moderate Sunni Muslims living in the area around the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Through a history dating back to biblical times, they have endured persecution and betrayal, surviving only through stubborn compromise with greater powers. They have always desired their own state, and now, accidentally, the United States may have helped them take a huge step toward that goal.As Quil Lawrence relates in his fascinating and timely study of the Iraqi Kurds, while their ambition and determination grow apace, their future will be largely dependent on whether America values a budding democracy in the region, or decides to yet again sacrifice the Kurds in the name of political expediency. Either way, the Kurdish north may well prove to be the defining battleground in Iraq, as the country struggles to hold itself together. At this extraordinary moment in the saga of Kurdistan, informed by his deep knowledge of the people and region, Lawrence's intimate and unflinching portrait of the Kurds and their heretofore quixotic quest offers a vital and original lens through which to contemplate the future of Iraq and the surrounding Middle East.

    The Warrior's Honor is a report and a reflection on what he has seen in the places where ethnic war has become a way of life. Ignatieff charts the rise of the new moral interventionists--the relief workers, reporters, delegates, and diplomats who believe that other people's misery is of concern to us all. And he brings us face-to-face with the new ethnic warriors--the warlords, gunmen, and paramilitaries--who have escalated postmodern war to an unprecedented level of savagery. Hard-hitting and passionate, The Warrior's Honor is a profound and searching exploration of the perils and obligations of moral citizenship in a world scarred by war and genocide.

    And in the process it provides the outsider with a riveting insight into life as a Member.

     "A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace." -J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy "...a lovely little book." -Ross Douthat, The New York TimesThe child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon.Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth.Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book.Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history.In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.

    That call, starting on the margins of the party and the press, steadily grew until it became a deafening media and Democratic obsession. It culminated first in the Mueller report - which failed to find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the president - and then in a failed impeachment.And yet, even now, the Democrats and their media allies insist that President Trump must be guilty of something.They still accuse him of being a Russian stooge and an obstructer of justice. They claim he was “not exonerated” by the Mueller report.But the truth, as veteran reporter Byron York makes clear - using his unequaled access to sources inside Congress and the White House - is that Democrats and the media were gripped by an anti-Trump hysteria that blinded them to reality.

    In this definitive masterwork, distinguished Oxford historian Albert Hourani offers the most lucid, enlightening history ever written on the subject. From the rise of Islam to the Palestinian issue, from the Prophet Mohammed to Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi. A History of the Arab Peoples chronicles the rich spiritual, political and cultural institutions of this civilization through thirteen centuries of war, peace, literature and religion. Lauded by authorities, encyclopedic and panoramic in its scope, here is a remarkable window on today's conflicts and on the future of a glorious and troubled land.

    A term given to flowers of stone fruit trees and some other plants that flower profusely in Spring. Blossoms provide pollen to bees, and initiate cross-pollination necessary for trees to reproduce by producing fruit. 2. A peak period or stage of development. Covering topics including housing, health, language and culture, Riddoch looks at the way in which Scots identify themselves and how this needs to change in order for the country to blossom u as an independent nation or a strongly devolved one. Arguing that limited access to security and wealth has left Scots feeling like outsiders in their own country, this book tackles fundamental and personal issues of identity that matter to ordinary Scots. Designed to incite discussion and debate, this book will appeal to those who believe larger issues of self esteem and power lurk beneath the complexities of the independence debate and want to delve deeperBACK COVERWhat will it take for Scotland to blossom? "Imagine Scotland as a beautifully-knitted, warmth-providing sweater caught on a snag. Its wearer tries to move forward u but cannot. A pause is needed to lift the garment clear. Scotland is thus snagged. And no amount of tugging will free it from the stubborn, progress-inhibiting three-headed hook of inequality, distant control and top-down governance." Weeding out vital components of Scottish identity from decades of political and social tangle is no mean task, but itOCOs one journalist Lesley Riddoch has undertaken. Dispensing with the tired, yo-yoing jousts over fiscal commissions, Devo Something and EU in-or-out, "Blossom" pinpoints both the buds of growth and the blight thatOCOs holding Scotland back. Drawing from its people, history, and the authorOCOs own passionate and outspoken perspective this is a plain-speaking but incisive call to restore control to local communities and let Scotland flourish.

     Sandro was a crucial witness to the collapse of his family. He was the cousin, brother-in-law and close friend of the last tsar, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He was with Nicky when thousands of Russian peasants died at Khodynka Field during Nicky’s coronation; he was with Nicky in the lead-up to the disastrous Russo-Japanese War; he was with Nicky during the failed revolution of 1905-6; he was with Nicky when the Russian Duma was established in an attempt to ward off future revolutions; he was with Nicky as Russia moved determinedly toward a military showdown with Germany; he was with Nicky fighting the German army of the Eastern Front during the First World War; he was with Nicky when he abdicated in favour of his brother, Michael, who refused the throne. This is a riveting first-hand account of the final days of the Russian Empire and of what it was like to be a member of the Russian Imperial Family at that time. And to our great good fortune, while Sandro may have been no Stolypin, he was a keen observer and an excellent writer. Anyone intrigued by the last days of the Romanovs as the ruling family of Russia should read this book.

    As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world. The West has led these revolutions, but now we are in the midst of a fourth revolution, and it is Western government that is in danger of being left behind.Now, things really are different. The West’s debt load is unsustainable. The developing world has harvested the low-hanging fruits. Industrialization has transformed all the peasant economies it had left to transform, and the toxic side effects of rapid developing world growth are adding to the bill. From Washington to Detroit, from Brasilia to New Delhi, there is a dual crisis of political legitimacy and political effectiveness.The Fourth Revolution crystallizes the scope of the crisis and points forward to our future. The authors enjoy extraordinary access to influential figures and forces the world over, and the book is a global tour of the innovators in how power is to be wielded. The age of big government is over; the age of smart government has begun. Many of the ideas the authors discuss seem outlandish now, but the center of gravity is moving quickly.This tour drives home a powerful argument: that countries’ success depends overwhelmingly on their ability to reinvent the state. And that much of the West—and particularly the United States—is failing badly in its task. China is making rapid progress with government reform at the same time as America is falling badly behind. Washington is gridlocked, and America is in danger of squandering its huge advantages from its powerful economy because of failing government. And flailing democracies like India look enviously at China’s state-of-the-art airports and expanding universities.The race to get government right is not just a race of efficiency. It is a race to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century—the liberal values of democracy and liberty or the authoritarian values of command and control. The stakes could not be higher.

     Theo Aronson's The Kaisers is the story of six people whose bitter differences were a microcosm of, and greatly influenced, a national conflict which echoed all round the world. Kaiser Wilhelm I, born 1797, King of Prussia 1861, proclaimed Emperor of all Germany 1871, died only in 1888 an autocratic, militaristic man of the eighteenth century completely opposed to the liberalizing ideas which swept Europe in his lifetime. In contrast his Empress, Augusta, was progressive in thought, open-minded in outlook, yet with all had a taste for the theatrical and pageantry of her royal status. The best of her was seen in their son, Kaiser Frederick III, who was Crown Prince for all but the last few cancer-torn weeks of his life. He personified the best of European liberalism of the nineteenth century. In this he was supported—many said unduly influenced by his energetic and vivacious English wife Victoria, Queen Victoria's eldest and 'Dearest Child', who brought to the marriage the enlightened ideals and hopes of her shrewd, practical mother and her far-seeing father, the Prince Consort. The tragedy, the tempting speculation of Germany's history, is that this couple reigned for only three months before Frederick III's death brought their son to the throne. Kaiser Wilhelm II, 'Kaiser Bill' of the first World War, was again the antithesis of everything his parents stood for. Queen Victoria's hopes that her grandson might be 'wise, sensible, courageous — liberal-minded — good and pure', could hardly have been more misplaced. The sixth, the dominating figure in the Hohenzollern story, is Prince Otto von Bismarck, the ruthless 'Iron Chancellor', virtual dictator of Germany for nearly thirty years. He served all three Kaisers, claiming with justification that on his shoulders he had carried the first to the Imperial throne—where he manipulated him to his will despite the hatred and manoeuvrings of the Empress Augusta. He feared the reign of the short-lived second Kaiser and feared more perhaps (and never missed an opportunity to disparage) the Empress Victoria and the constant, commonsense influence from England of her mother. (`That', he said ruefully after their one meeting, 'was a woman ! One could do business with her ! ') Their son he flattered, siding with him against his parents, and in so doing brought about his own downfall, when the vainglorious young man he had schooled as Crown Prince came as Kaiser to believe that he could do without his mentor. But for Europe it was too late, and the policies of one and the vanities of the other were already leading Europe helter-skelter into the holocaust of 'the Kaiser's War'. Theo Aronson's gifts as a writer have deservedly brought him high regard as a chronicler of the complex histories of Europe's great ruling Houses. Rarely have his talents been better employed than in this study of the comet-like rise and fall of the House of Hohenzollern, the House of the Kaisers of Germany. It is a story of bitter, almost continual conflict, yet even in what can now be seen as a path to inevitable destruction Mr. Aronson finds passages of light and shade that show the Hohenzollerns not simply as Wagnerian puppets posturing on a vast European stage, but people deserving of our understanding and compassion.

    In newspapers, on television, and during orchestrated spectacles Asad is praised as the "father," the "gallant knight," even the country's "premier pharmacist." Yet most Syrians, including those who create the official rhetoric, do not believe its claims. Why would a regime spend scarce resources on a cult whose content is patently spurious?Wedeen concludes that Asad's cult acts as a disciplinary device, generating a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens act as if they revered their leader. By inundating daily life with tired symbolism, the regime exercises a subtle, yet effective form of power. The cult works to enforce obedience, induce complicity, isolate Syrians from one another, and set guidelines for public speech and behavior. Wedeen's ethnographic research demonstrates how Syrians recognize the disciplinary aspects of the cult and seek to undermine them. Provocative and original, Ambiguities of Domination is a significant contribution to comparative politics, political theory, and cultural studies.

    A lively, idiosyncratic, witty look at what is at the heart of our political process by a man who has crossed over from observer to activist, to become one of our newest members of parliament.

    With acid tongue planted firmly in cheek, author Aldous J. Pennyfarthing takes on the president’s unsurpassed ignorance, rampant racism, shocking pettiness, vertiginous dishonesty, and more. Based on the viral Daily Kos post of the same name. Approximately 345 pages.

    The narrative—sometimes shocking, other times hilarious in its absurdity—gives the listener a real-life understanding of how gun-control laws only make it more difficult for honest, law-abiding people to get guns, while violent crime continues to rise. Using facts and newly uncovered research, Miller exposes the schemes politicians on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and around the country are using to deny people their Second Amendment rights. She exposes the myths that gun grabbers and liberal media use to get new laws passed that infringe on our right to keep and bear arms.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.