The events/developments that unsettle international politics of the Gulf are two kinds: internal and external to the region. Yet, no matter whether it is internal or external, its consequences concern us all, no matter where we live in. What happens in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. It unleashes ripple effects that reach directly or indirectly into our pockets and hence our lives. I am one of them and a non-resident scholar in the Middle East Institute, broadly speaking, writing on Turkey, the Persian/Arab Gulf, and the Middle East.
What are the constituents of the risk Iran poses to the Arab Gulf states? Military? Yes. Ideological? Yes. Rival in the regional influence game? Definitely. But, among all, in my personal view, the trans-border distribution of Shias in the Middle East and in the Gulf is the most serious one. For worse, this book shows, the Shias also constitute a transnational community linked through religious networks. Hence Iran’s hegemonic rise will seriously complicate the problem the presence of Shias poses for at least two, potentially three Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and potentially Kuwait. To see the root cause of the Gulf’s Iran/Shia problem, read this book.
Laurence Louer, author of the critically acclaimed To Be an Arab in Israel, brings her extensive knowledge of the Middle East to an analysis of the historical origins and present situation of militant Shia transnational networks. She focuses on three key countries in the gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, whose Shia Islamic groups are the offspring of various Iraqi movements that have surfaced over recent decades. Louer explains how these groups first penetrated local societies by espousing the networks of Shiite clergymen. She then describes the role of factional quarrels and the Iranian revolution of 1979 in defining the…
My father, John Bradley, was a veteran and fought on Iwo Jima in World War 2 in 1945. Later I walked in the sands of Iwo Jima and eventually wrote four books about war. I am a New York Times best-selling author and Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood made my first book into a movie, Flags of Our Fathers. I've been traveling in and learning about Asia since 1974, when I attended Sophia University in Tokyo. I am also the host of a podcast called Untold Pacific that mines 40 years of my life to create historical travelogues about the American experience on the other side of the Pacific.
David Halberstam documents how fools go to war. This book is about the whiz kids that got us into the Vietnam war and ran it under the JFK and the Johnson administrations. The same ones who got us into the Iraq War, the Spanish American War, and so on. There is a quote that I love from this book that effectively says, "they used brilliant policies that defied common sense." And, that sums this all up. These whiz kids ran a war as if it was part of American politics and from thousands of miles away with memos and meetings in DC. They completely screwed it up.
David Halberstam was a correspondent in Saigon and knew these insiders. He wrote about the decision-making that was happening behind closed doors that led to one of our greatest follies. He is a master storyteller and I strongly recommend this book.
David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain.
"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.”—The New York Times
Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.
I am a professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I work on ethics and related questions about human agency and human knowledge. My interest in adversity is both personal and philosophical: it comes from my own experience with chronic pain and from a desire to revive the tradition of moral philosophy as a medium of self-help. My last book was Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, and I have also written about baseball and philosophy, stand-up comedy, and the American author H. P. Lovecraft.
Although it is more academic than the others I’ve recommended, this book is both practical and urgent: it asks how we’re responsible for facing up to the structures of injustice in which we are implicated—the legacies of colonialism and slavery, the ongoing catastrophe of climate change. Young’s answer is that responsibility here is not about guilt or shame but the obligation to work for change, an obligation we can only meet through collective action, working with others to transform the systems around us. Young’s argument is rich, provocative, and inspiring.
When the noted political philosopher Iris Marion Young died in 2006, her death was mourned as the passing of "one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century" (Cass Sunstein) and as an important and innovative thinker working at the conjunction of a number of important topics: global justice; democracy and difference; continental political theory; ethics and international affairs; and gender, race and public policy.
In her long-awaited Responsibility for Justice, Young discusses our responsibilities to address "structural" injustices in which we among many are implicated (but for which we not to blame), often by virtue of participating…
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for felony kidnapping seven years earlier—an arrest she’d never bothered to tell Russ about.
Miranda tries to explain that she was only helping her best friend, in the midst of a nasty custody battle, take her daughter to visit her parents in Israel. As Miranda struggles to prove that she’s not a criminal, she stumbles into other secrets that will challenge what she thought she knew about her own family, her friend, Russ—and herself.
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for felony kidnapping seven years earlier—an arrest she’d never bothered to tell Russ about.
Miranda tries to explain that she was only helping her best friend, in the midst of a nasty custody battle, take her daughter to visit her parents in Israel. As Miranda struggles to prove that she’s not…
I have been an activist working on issues relating to human rights and youth protection for over fifteen years and during that time I worked as a lawyer and was lucky enough to make films and write two novels. Eventually, I would concentrate solely on activism and my reading would become very specific and as the focus of my activism changed and I directed my energies to corporate accountability my reading changed course again. The list I offer is from talented writers on important subjects, all write extremely well about things that matter to a human rights activist.
Baldwin writes both fiction and non-fiction beautifully and intimately and if you don’t know his non-fiction work then this is a very good place to start. Across a number of essays, he elegantly sets out the deep struggle faced by Black Americans and articulates how a different humanity, in America and beyond, and a different future can be realized.
#26 on The Guardian's list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America
In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With films like I Am Not Your Negro and the forthcoming If Beale Street Could Talk bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction.
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was…
As a psychologist with environmental interests people often ask me about hope. It goes something like this: “Climate change is pushing us toward disaster! What is your source of hope?” I finally figured out that I only have one source of hope. It is that we, as people, are able to work together just well enough to keep it all afloat. There’s a lot involved in working together – learning to listen with compassion, run good meetings, empower everyone to give of their best, and rebuild trust when it starts to break down. I’ve been researching these topics in community settings for the past 15 years.
This was the book that introduced me to complex systems. Many people have become familiar with complex systems in recent years as we’ve been exposed to talk of feedback loops and probability through discussions on climate change. Little inputs can make a big difference and big inputs sometimes collapse under the weight of their own inertia. This book has one of those titles that work their way into your imagination – getting to maybe?
It does not suggest you set goals and work, head down, towards your personal mission. It suggests that you take a look around, gather with others, invite ideas based on people’s passions, and get started. It is all about experimenting and learning together. Then, maybe, something will good will happen. The book offers plenty of inspiring examples of significant social change as a result of genuine innovation and listening to many voices.
A practical, inspirational, revolutionary guide to social innovation
Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary…
I embarked as a teenager on an overland journey from Europe to Nepal, and have made a career out of returning to the Himalaya as often as possible. My research and photographic expeditions to the mountains over the many decades have led me into some of the most exquisite landscapes and cultures on the planet. In all cases, I seek to combine the physical experiences with aesthetic and spiritual ones, and the books I tend to read about the region also move me in those directions.
Sometimes I’m looking for a book that contains it all—history, geology, nature, culture, and adventure, and this one comes very close to succeeding. It’s a dense book, filled with facts, but readable nonetheless. It also does what many accounts fail to do, which is to personalize the historical events by bringing to life the characters involved. It works as both a sit-down narrative and a reference volume for the library.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021 / BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK AWARDS SPECIAL JURY MENTION 2020 This is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains.
Spanning millennia, from its earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya is a soaring account of resilience and conquest, discovery and plunder, oppression and enlightenment at the 'roof of the world'.
From all around the globe, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers and mountaineers…
I’ve always been a bit of a daydreamer and drawn to books that look through a window into the "other world." These novels, often dubbed dystopian, are reflections or exaggerations of our own world, and this always appealed to me. Like the question, "What if?”. The premise of “What if we lived in a world where you had to pay for words?” inspired my first novel, The Qwerty Man. Although I love fiction, I’m more of a nonfiction reader these days and interested in Buddhism (as an education, not religion), geography, and history. I’ve also written travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet and a children’s travel poetry book called Rhyme Travels.
I read this book relatively recently, not at school or when I was in my twenties, but when I was in my late thirties. I had heard of the novel, and the concept of burning books was all-too familiar as I studied a module on Holocaust literature at university. However, the premise of Ray Bradbury’s novel, written in 1953, was so simple yet so powerful.
It echoes with our own reality today, as although books are not being burned, we are seeing the art of writing itself being "burned" or minimized by tools such as AI or social media. The virtual burning of honest reportage or poetry for opinionated views and algorithms is one symptom of today’s fast-paced society.
There were some great quotes in Fahrenheit 451, too; the one that really stuck out was, “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… A child or a book or a…
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.
Over 1 million copies sold in the UK.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
I’ve been obsessed with political thrillers since reading All The President’s Menwhen I was far too young to understand it all. What I didknow was that at the upper echelons of society there were often shadowy conspiracies at play, and brave souls fighting to expose the truth. Something about Woodward and Bernstein’s quiet heroism and bravery in investigating a story that everyone told them to drop really stayed with me. That’s why I write political thrillers: in an attempt to tip the scales back in favour of good versus evil. And to make heroes of those who risk it all to tell truth to power.
This one was a game-changer for me, taking thinly-disguised characters and events from real life – an obvious Tony Blair-type, fleeing prosecution for war crimes in a clear nod to the Iraq War – Harris wisely ushers us into the world of high-stakes politics via the innocent and unnamed Ghost Writer, hired to write a disgraced Prime Minister’s memoirs.
It’s a brilliant and clever mechanism that makes the reader feel at home. And when murder appears, puts you squarely in the shoes of a terrified man on the run.
As a technical piece of thriller writing, it’s stunning stuff. Harris’s decision to base a fantastical conspiracy around real-life events and characters was inspiring – and it’s something I use in every book.
'An unputdownable thriller about corrupt power and sex' Sunday Telegraph
'Guaranteed to keep you awake' The Times
A body washes up on the deserted coastline of America's most exclusive holiday retreat. But it's no open-and-shut case of suicide. The death of Robert McAra is just the first piece of the jigsaw in an extraordinary plot that will shake the very foundations of international security.
For McAra was a man who knew too much. As ghostwriter to one of the most controversial men on the planet - Britain's former prime minister, holed up in a remote ocean-front house to finish his…
What was the Lost Cause? Dilorenzoanswers this question from the perspective
of a Southerner which is great material for a novel on the Civil War.
The book is fun
because Dilorenzo presents his positions with entertaining gusto. He tries hard
to convince the reader that the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do
with slavery; the South did not provoke war; the Constitution included a right
to secede, the South should have been allowed to leave peacefully; antebellum
life in the South was prosperous, dignified, and just; slavery was already
dying; Robert E. Lee deserved deification, U. S. Grant deserved vilification,
the North deserves condemnation for engaging in total war; and most important,
Lincoln was a vile despot.
History is written by victors-except in this case. It was an interesting read.
A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in american history in order to build an empire that rivaled…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
This book dissects the arguments of global-warming opponents through the scientific lens of Jim Hansen, who at the time it was published, directed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen and Bowen finds the climate deniers’ opinions dangerous for their inaccuracies and ignorance of how the geophysical world works. For interpreting geophysical reality to those who didn’t want to hear it (or stood to lose money if such thinking became part of policy), Hansen became a target to some, and a hero to others.
It’s not a common event to see a renowned scientist carried away from a protest in handcuffs. Hansen got used to it.
Documents the Bush administration's censorship of a leading climatologist whose work demonstrated the significant dangers of global warming, in an account that explains the scientific principles behind global warming while identifying ways to prevent an imminent environmental disaster.
