By Way of Deception is the true story of an officer in Israel's most secret agency:Author's ForwardPrologue: Operation SphinxRecruitmentSchool DaysFreshmenSophomoresRookiesThe Belgian TableHairpieceHail & FarewellStrellaCarlosExocetCheckmateHelping ArafatOnly in AmericaOperation MosesHarbor InsuranceBeirutEpilogueAppendicesGlossary of TermsIndex

    In this book, Muhammad Abdel Haleem examines its recurrent themes and for the first time sets them in the context of the Qur'an's linguistic style. Haleem examines the background to the development of the surahs (chapters) and the ayahs (verses) and the construction of the Qur'an itself.

    Writing in Italy's Il Giorno, Giancarlo Vigorelli has announced, "One must make room for Fallaci next to Hemingway and Malraux. For Whom the Bell Tolls and Man's Hope are to the Spanish Civil War what Inshallah is to the dirty genocide of Lebanon." In France, Le Figaro has praised Inshallah's Goya-like depictions of the disasters of war, and Le Nouvel Observateur has called it "The Iliad in Beirut." At the center of this teeming, extraordinary novel is the divided city of Beirut, besieged and battered by foreign armies, rival Lebanese factions, and fundamentalist terrorists. In the opening pages we witness the devastating suicide bombing of the American and French marine barracks in 1983, and in its aftermath we meet the large and colorful cast of soldiers in the Italian contingent of the trilateral peacekeeping force, as well as the women of Beirut and the residents whose lives are caught up in the conflict. The loves and hates, hopes and anxieties, heroic actions and cowardly betrayals, reflect the horror and madness of this brutal, never-ending nightmare. Inshallah is a war novel about destiny, a study of love in all its aspects. It is engrossing, dramatic, funny, and always intensely readable. Only Oriana Fallaci, with her unique breadth of experience and masterful command of language and image, could have written such a profound novel, one filled with compassion for men and women, a work that will long stand as a monumental testament to the imperishable human spirit.

    This new edition, twenty years after the Zionist terrorism in Shabra and Shatila which killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, is a tribute to the ongoing struggle against Zionist occupation in the Holy Lands.

    J. O'Rourke's classic, best-selling guided tour of the world's most desolate, dangerous, and desperate places. Tired of making bad jokes and believing that the world outside seemed a much worse joke than anything I could conjure, P. J. O'Rourke traversed the globe on a fun-finding mission, investigating the way of life in the most desperate places on the planet, including Warsaw, Managua, and Belfast. The result is Holidays in Hell--a full-tilt, no-holds-barred romp through politics, culture, and ideology. P.J.'s adventures include storming student protesters' barricades with riot police in South Korea, interviewing Communist insurrectionists in the Philippines, and going undercover dressed in Arab garb in the Gaza Strip. He also takes a look at America's homegrown horrors as he braves the media frenzy surrounding the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington D.C., uncovers the mortifying banality behind the white-bread kitsch of Jerry Falwell's Heritage USA, and survives the stultifying boredom of Harvard's 350th anniversary celebration. Packed with P.J.'s classic riffs on everything from Polish nightlife under communism to Third World driving tips, Holidays in Hell is one of the best-loved books by one of today's most celebrated humorists.

    Twenty-one years old and recently broken up from his girlfriend, Warner feels his life is both intense and directionless. Immersing himself in the vibrant and diverse city, he quickly befriends a group of LGBT students, many of whom are ex-pats straddling different cultures and embracing the freedoms of the multicultural city. Warner and his friends party, do drugs, and hook up, even as violence breaks out in the city--the scars of a fifteen-year civil war reopening with a series of political assassinations and bombings. As the city descends into chaos and violence, Warner feels his grasp on reality slowly begin to slip as he confronts traumas in his past and anxiety over his future.Illustrated in beautiful and intricate detail, Spring Rain is an absorbing and poignant graphic memoir of a young man's attempt to gain control over his life as well as a portrait of a city and a nation's violent struggle to define its future.

    In early scenes, Luli describes life in his seaside home, where he revels in the company of three cats—the Lucys of the title. Following a trip to Beirut to visit Luli’s aunt and uncle, the family is driving home when a “red streak shoots across the horizon and a loud boom fills the air.” The bombs force Luli and his parents to return to Beirut, where they stay with their relatives for weeks, Luli’s thoughts often with the Lucys. Working in soft swathes of watercolor, Kahn confidently bridges the emotional transition from tender family meals under a setting sun to frightening moments hiding in gray basements. The disappearance of one of the Lucys and the evident destruction wrought by the bombing offer a somber, though not hopeless, entry point for discussions of loss and the consequences of war. Ages 8–9. (Publisher's Weekly)

    This eloquent ethnographic portrayal of an Islamic community articulates how an alternative modernity, and specifically an enchanted modernity, may be constructed by Shi'I Muslims who consider themselves simultaneously deeply modern, cosmopolitan, and pious.In this depiction of a Shi'I Muslim community in Beirut, Deeb examines the ways that individual and collective expressions and understandings of piety have been debated, contested, and reformulated.Women take center stage in this process, a result of their visibility both within the community, and in relation to Western ideas that link the status of women to modernity. By emphasizing the ways notions of modernity and piety are lived, debated, and shaped by everyday Islamists, this book underscores the inseparability of piety and politics in the lives of pious Muslims.

    The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have likewise been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation. What is common to all the operations, however, is that they failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and in many cases left the countries in question worse off than they were before.Philip H. Gordon's Losing the Long Game is a thorough and riveting look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels. It is the story of repeated U.S. interventions in the region that always started out with high hopes and often the best of intentions, but never turned out well. No future discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East will be complete without taking into account the lessons of the past, especially at a time of intense domestic polarization and reckoning with America's standing in world.

    As much as unemployment, economic stagnation, and social deprivation exacerbate the ongoing turmoil in the banlieues, the root of the problem lies elsewhere: in the continuing fallout from Europe's colonial era. Combining a fascinating and compulsively readable mix of history, literature, and politics with his years of personal experience visiting the banlieues and countries across the Arab world, especially Algeria, Hussey attempts to make sense of the present situation. In the course of teasing out the myriad interconnections between past and present in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Beirut, and Western Europe, The French Intifada shows that the defining conflict of the twenty-first century will not be between Islam and the West but between two dramatically different experiences of the world—the colonizers and the colonized.

    Forced to flee from Syria, they become asylum-seekers in Lebanon, and finally resettled refugees in the West. It is a story that has been replayed thousands of times by other families.When the family home in Aleppo is destroyed by a government-led bomb strike, Walid has no choice but to take his wife and children and flee their war-torn and much loved homeland. They struggle to survive in the wretched refugee camps of Lebanon, and when Youssef becomes fatally ill as a result of the poor hygienic conditions, his father is forced to take great personal risk to save his family.Walid's daughter, the young Amina, a whip-smart grade-A student, tells the story. As she witnesses firsthand the harsh realities that her family must endure if they are to survive -- swindling smugglers, treacherous ocean crossings, and jihadist militias -- she is forced to grow up very quickly in order to help her parents and brother.Kullab's narrative masterfully maps both the collapse and destruction of Syria, and the real-life tragedies faced by its citizens still today. The family's escape from their homeland makes for a harrowing tale, but with their safe arrival in the West it serves as a hopeful endnote to this ongoing worldwide crisis.Beautiful illustrations by Jackie Roche -- whose work on the viral web-comic, Syria's Climate Conflict, was seen prominently in Symboliamag. com, Upworthy.com and Motherjones.com, among others -- bring Kullab's words to life in stunning imagery that captures both the horror of war and the dignity of human will.

    David Lamb, who spent years as a correspondent in Cairo, explores the Arabs’ religious, political, and cultural views, noting the differences and key similarities between the many segments of the Arab world. He explains Arab attitudes and actions toward the West, including the growth of terrorism, and situates current events in a larger historical backdrop that goes back more than a thousand years.Now thoroughly revised and updated, The Arabs takes the story up to 2001. Lamb analyzes the developments that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and helps the reader to understand how things got to that point. A veteran journalist, Lamb combines his extensive experience in covering international politics with his deeply informed insider’s knowledge to provide an intimate portrait of the Arab world today.

    Now, in her enchanting new book, Arabesque, she revisits the three countries with the most exciting cuisines today—Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon. Interweaving history, stories, and her own observations, she gives us 150 of the most delectable recipes: some of them new discoveries, some reworkings of classic dishes—all of them made even more accessible and delicious for today’s home cook.From Morocco, the most exquisite and refined cuisine of North Africa: couscous dishes; multilayered pies; delicately flavored tagines; ways of marrying meat, poultry, or fish with fruit to create extraordinary combinations of spicy, savory, and sweet.From Turkey, a highly sophisticated cuisine that dates back to the Ottoman Empire yet reflects many new influences today: a delicious array of kebabs, fillo pies, eggplant dishes in many guises, bulgur and chickpea salads, stuffed grape leaves and peppers, and sweet puddings.From Lebanon, a cuisine of great diversity: a wide variety of mezze (those tempting appetizers that can make a meal all on their own); dishes featuring sun-drenched Middle Eastern vegetables and dried legumes; and national specialties such as kibbeh, meatballs with pine nuts, and lamb shanks with yogurt.Claudia Roden knows this part of the world so intimately that we delight in being in such good hands as she translates the subtle play of flavors and simple cooking techniques to our own home kitchens.

    Moorehead's experience living and working with refugees puts a human face on the news, providing unforgettable portraits of the refugees she meets in Cairo, Guinea, Sicily, Lebanon, England, Australia, Finland, and at the U.S.-Mexico border. Human Cargo changes our understanding of what it means to have and lose a place in the world, and reveals how the refugee "problem" is on a par with global crises such as terrorism and world hunger.

    She recounts the day-to-day realities of living in a city under siege, where food has to be consumed or thrown out because there is no way to preserve it, where eventually people cannot sleep until the nightly bombing commences, where packs of stray dogs roam the streets (and provide her own dog Salvi with a harem) and rats invade homes. Through it all, al-Radi works at her art and gathers with neighbors and family for meals and other occasions, happy and sad. In the wake of the war, al-Radi lives in semi-exile, shuttling between Beirut and Amman, travelling to New York, London, Mexico and Yemen. As she suffers the indignities of being an Iraqi in exile, al-Radi immerses us in a way of life constricted by the stress and effects of war and embargoes, giving texture to a reality we have only been able to imagine before now. But what emanates most vibrantly from these diaries is the spirit of endurance and the celebration of the smallest of life’s joys.