Bush. As Niall Ferguson writes, “If you think America’s entanglement in the Middle East began with Roosevelt and Truman, Michael Oren’s deeply researched and brilliantly written history will be a revelation to you, as it was to me. With its cast of fascinating characters—earnest missionaries, maverick converts, wide-eyed tourists, and even a nineteenth-century George Bush—Power, Faith, and Fantasy is not only a terrific read, it is also proof that you don’t really understand an issue until you know its history.”

    Kim Ghattas follows everyday citizens whose lives have been affected by the geopolitical drama.Most Americans assume that extremism, Sunni-Shia antagonism, and anti-Americanism have always existed in the Middle East, but prior to 1979, Saudi Arabia and Iran were working allies. It was only after that year--a remarkable turning point--that Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia began to use religion as a tool in their competition for dominance in the region, igniting the culture wars that led to the 1991 American invasion of Iraq, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS.Ghattas shows how Saudi Arabia and Iran went from allies against the threat of communism from Russia, with major roles in the US anti-Soviet strategy, to mortal enemies that use religious conservatism to incite division and unrest from Egypt to Pakistan.

    But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s.To fight the “slavery” of FDR’s New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for “freedom under God” that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was “one nation under God.”Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.

    That morning began to put into focus some of the experiences of Vera’s thirty year airline career, which she had purposely been avoiding. It caused her to look more deeply into the questions surrounding 9/11 that never made sense to a flight attendant, but that no one had seriously investigated.With the help of her pilot friend Jim Bowman, they embark on a cross country journey employing their wisdom, experience and intense research to uncover the mysteries of what really happened to the four airplanes and the people on them that fateful day. Written as a novel, Methodical Illusion has been excruciatingly researched from an insider’s perspective, utilizing proprietary knowledge of airplanes, universal FAA protocols, standardized flight crew procedures and all hijacking policies. The results are the never before revealed answers to the daunting questions everyone has had, but few have dared ask aloud for fear of the repercussions that undoubtedly follow. Rebekah Roth is right on target with her mind blowing research which is guaranteed to open your eyes.

    That's what they're called. And while the politically correct try to deny their existence, the shocking reality of these "No Go Zones"—where Sharia law can prevail and local police stay away—can be attested to by its many victims.Now Raheem Kassam, a courageous reporter and editor at Breitbart.com, takes us where few journalists have dared to tread—inside the No Go Zones, revealing areas that Western governments, including the United States, don't want to admit exist within their own borders.With compelling reporting, Kassam takes you into Islamic areas you might not even know existed—communities, neighborhoods, and whole city districts from San Bernardino, California, (a No Go Zone of the mind) to Hamtramck, Michigan (essentially an Islamic colony in the Midwest); from Malmö, Sweden, to the heart of London, England—where infidels are unwelcome, Islamic law is king, and extremism grows. In No Go Zones, Kassam reveals: How in No Go Zones a blind eye is being turned to polygamy, female genital mutilation, sexual assault, segregation, and even honor killings Why Muslim ghettos in the West aren't the equivalent of Little Italy or Chinatown, but a serious cultural and political threat How the welfare state actually funds and supports a Muslim subculture of resentment How to identify extremist mosques A matter of numbers: how mass migration could transform Europe into a Muslim-dominated continent within our own lifetimes The alarming speed at which No Go Zones are coming to America Compelling in its reporting, shocking in its detail, Raheem Kassam's No Go Zones is one of the most frightening true stories you will read this year.

    Through observation, anecdote, extensive interviews, and analysis Karen Elliot House navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves trapped and reveals the mysterious nation that is the world’s largest exporter of oil, critical to global stability, and a source of Islamic terrorists. In her probing and sharp-eyed portrait, we see Saudi Arabia, one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, considered to be the final bulwark against revolution in the region, as threatened by multiple fissures and forces, its levers of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of the increasingly restive population they rule is under the age of 20. The author writes that oil-rich Saudi Arabia has become a rundown welfare state. The public pays no taxes; gets free education and health care; and receives subsidized water, electricity, and energy (a gallon of gasoline is cheaper in the Kingdom than a bottle of water), with its petrodollars buying less and less loyalty. House makes clear that the royal family also uses Islam’s requirement of obedience to Allah—and by extension to earthly rulers—to perpetuate Al Saud rule. Behind the Saudi facade of order and obedience, today’s Saudi youth, frustrated by social conformity, are reaching out to one another and to a wider world beyond their cloistered country. Some 50 percent of Saudi youth is on the Internet; 5.1 million Saudis are on Facebook. To write this book, the author interviewed most of the key members of the very private royal family. She writes about King Abdullah’s modest efforts to relax some of the kingdom’s most oppressive social restrictions; women are now allowed to acquire photo ID cards, finally giving them an identity independent from their male guardians, and are newly able to register their own businesses but are still forbidden to drive and are barred from most jobs. With extraordinary access to Saudis—from key religious leaders and dissident imams to women at university and impoverished widows, from government officials and political dissidents to young successful Saudis and those who chose the path of terrorism—House argues that most Saudis do not want democracy but seek change nevertheless; they want a government that provides basic services without subjecting citizens to the indignity of begging princes for handouts; a government less corrupt and more transparent in how it spends hundreds of billions of annual oil revenue; a kingdom ruled by law, not royal whim. In House’s assessment of Saudi Arabia’s future, she compares the country today to the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived with reform policies that proved too little too late after decades of stagnation under one aged and infirm Soviet leader after another. She discusses what the next generation of royal princes might bring and the choices the kingdom faces: continued economic and social stultification with growing risk of instability, or an opening of society to individual initiative and enterprise with the risk that this, too, undermines the Al Saud hold on power. A riveting book—informed, authoritative, illuminating—about a country that could well be on the brink, and an in-depth examination of what all this portends for Saudi Arabia’s future, and for our own.

    The author evaluates the casualties of the war on terror in this story of pre-emptive imprisonment for an act of terrorism never committed, of a terrorist cell that may not even have been a cell.

    For many Americans, 9/11/2001, is the darkest date in the nation's history. What exactly happened? Could it have been prevented? How & why did so much acrimony & bad information arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon & a Pennsylvania field? What remains unresolved? What is certain: Discord & dissent continue to this day. Beginning with the 1st brutal actions of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, The Eleventh Day tracks the sequence of events & introduces the players: pilots, terrorists, passengers & those who died on the ground. Drawing on previously classified records & raw transcripts, Summers & Swan investigate the response of President Bush & the military that day, & the failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. They document the untruths told afterward by US officials &, as counterpoint, consider the contentions of the 9/11 Truth movement. With meticulous research, they examine the personalities of those behind the onslaught, analyze their motives & expose the US intelligence blunders preceding the attacks. They note how afterward--without good evidence--the Bush administration tried to link 9/11 to Iraq. Finally, they confront the question the 9/11 Commission's report blurred: Were the terrorists backed by powerful figures in a foreign nation long viewed as a friend? Riveting, revelatory, thoroughly sourced & complete with extensive endnotes, The Eleventh Day is the essential one-volume work on a pivotal event.

    Bush, showing how he ignored his advisors to make key decisions himself—most disastrously in invading Iraq—and how these decisions were often driven by the President’s deep religious faith.George W. Bush, the forty-third president of the United States, almost singlehandedly decided to invade Iraq. It was possibly the worst foreign-policy decision ever made by a president. The consequences dominated the Bush Administration and still haunt us today.In Bush, a “well-rounded portrait…necessary and valuable in this election year” (Christian Science Monitor), Jean Edward Smith demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice, but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. Domestically, he overreacted to 9/11 and endangered Americans’ civil liberties. Smith explains that it wasn’t until the financial crisis of 2008 that Bush finally accepted expert advice. As a result, he authorized decisions that saved the economy from possible collapse, even though some of those decisions violated Bush’s own political philosophy.“An excellent initial assessment of a presidency that began in controversy…and ended with the international and domestic failures that saddled Bush with the most sustained negative ratings of any modern president” (Dallas Morning News), this comprehensive evaluation will surely surprise many readers. “Written in sober, smooth, snark-free prose, with an air of thoughtful, detached authority, the book is nonetheless exceedingly damning in its judgments about George W. Bush’s years in office” (The Washington Post).

    Behind the scenes, wrenching debates between hawks and doves—those who would kill versus those who would capture—have repeatedly tested the very core of the president’s identity.Top investigative reporter Dan Klaidman has spoken to dozens of sources to piece together a riveting Washington story packed with revelations. As the president’s inner circle debated secret programs, new legal frontiers, and the disjuncture between principles and down-and-dirty politics, Obama vacillated, sometimes lashed out, and spoke in lofty tones while approving a mounting toll of assassinations and kinetic-war operations. Klaidman’s fly-on-the-wall reporting reveals who has his ear, how key national security decisions are really made, and whether or not President Obama has lived up to the promise of candidate Obama. Readers making up their minds about him during the 2012 election year will turn to Kill or Capture to decide.

    Wilders' foes, whether murderous jihadists or the multicultural establishment, share the same "strategic objective" - to increase the cost of associating with him beyond that which most people are willing to bear. It is not easy to be Geert Wilders. He spent almost a decade in a strange, claustrophobic, transient, and tenuous existence little different from kidnap victims or, in his words, a political prisoner. He is under round-the-clock guard because of explicit threats to murder him by Muslim extremists.Yet he's the one who gets put on trial for incitement.... For every independent-minded soul ... there are a thousand other public figures who get the message: steer clear from Islam unless you want your life consumed - and steer clear of Wilders if you want to be left in peace.

    Is Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem to be drawn to extremism? And what do words like jihadism and fundamentalism really mean? In a world riven by misunderstanding and violence, Sam Harris--a famous atheist--and Maajid Nawaz--a former radical--demonstrate how two people with very different religious views can find common ground and invite you to join in an urgently needed conversation.

    Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur’anic schools—and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective. And, in 2011, young women helped to lead antigovernment protests in the Arab Spring. But their voices have not been heard. Their stories have not been told.In Syria, before its civil war, she documents a complex society in the midst of soul searching about its place in the world and about the role of women. In Lebanon, she documents a country that on the surface is freer than other Arab nations but whose women must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. In Abu Dhabi, Zoepf reports on a generation of Arab women who’ve found freedom in work outside the home. In Saudi Arabia she chronicles driving protests and women entering the retail industry for the first time. In the aftermath of Tahrir Square, she examines the crucial role of women in Egypt's popular uprising. Deeply informed, heartfelt, and urgent, Excellent Daughters brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies—from 9/11 to Tahrir Square to the rise of ISIS—and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change.

    Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission’s investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn.Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson’s text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission’s final report card. Colón’s stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American’s fingertips the most defining event of the century.

    It explores how it overtook the conservative movement after Obama became president. The book helps readers make sense of the chaos in the media and offers ideas for bringing a stop to it and help make America sane again Compiling example after example, the editors of Crooks and Liars, a popular blog, examine the torrent of right-wing kookery--the eager willingness of conservatives to fervently believe things that are provably false--and its ramifications both for our national discourse and our national well-being. The authors show how this outlandish, overheated rhetoric--generated by mainstream-media figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs--is accompanied by a wave of lethal right-wing threats and violence. They carefully expose the bias of Fox News contributors Neil Cavuto, Greta, Van Susteren, et al, and political opportunists like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. The book explores the main drivers of this descent into madness: the extremist Radical Right and the longtime Republican willingness--dating back to Nixon, but refined in more recent years by Lee Atwater and his acolytes--to engage in a divisive politics of resentment, both racial and cultural. It takes a critical look at how Tea Party provocateurs like Dick Armey and his Freedom Works organization that take huge contributions from big money interests like former presidential candidate Steve Forbes that are willing to turn a blind eye to bigots, birthers and neo-John Birchers. The book demonstrates how the Tea Party is the true face of the Republican Party. The authors propose simple ways ordinary Americans can help stop the descent into blind opposition for it own sake. They suggest that news audiences demand accountability by from their sources by critically commenting on their Web site and to their editors or producers. They write "confronting the media malfeasance that makes rightwing populism possible is only an important first step in meeting the challenges posed by the rise of this political pathology in American life. Ultimately, it means confronting the movement and its leaders, particularly in their embrace of conspiracy theories, falsehoods, scapegoating, and vicious eliminationist rhetoric."