"The power of the people is stronger than the people in power." Social media allow ideas to be shared. They are places where people can unite, Revolutions can begin. A new type of Revolution -- Revolution 2.0 Wael Ghonim used to be a man unwilling to publicly criticise the Egyptian regime. Like many, he was silenced by the fear of reprisals. But in January 2011 Wael decided he had seen too much oppression go unchallenged and started a Facebook page calling for the people to protest. It became a rallying-point for revolution and Egy... read more
September 1997. In an Amman street, five men purporting to be Canadian tourists accost a Palestinian and inject a mysterious chemical into his ear. Within 48 hours it should kill him and leave no trace. The assailants were Mossad agents; their target was Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas's political bureau in Jordan. But, after 48 hours, Khalid was not dead; instead, the Prime Minister of Israel, the President of the United States and the King of Jordan were locked in intense negotiations to save his life. Kill Khalid begins with one of... read more
This is the story of how a relatively poor European country not only survived the war physically intact, but came out of it much wealthier in 1945 than it had been when war broke out in 1939. The country's emergence as a prosperous European Union nation would be financed in part, it turns out, by a cache of Nazi gold.
For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was backward and benighted, locked into the Dark Ages and barely able to tell the time of day. Augustine had decreed that belief not reason should be the guiding light of Christian thinking, and partially as a result its people lived in a world of nominal literacy and subsistence farming, where blind faith, superstition and sorcery took the place of medicine and the church harnessed nascent aggression among the kingdoms to its own ends in the pursuit of astonishingly violent ... read more
James Carroll tells the richly layered story of the city of Jerusalem and its extraordinary impact on human history and contemporary conflict. He shows how the seemingly never-ending conflicts within this city that is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews underscore an important point of history: religion and violence fuel each other. Daily life in Jerusalem is a microcosm of division and dispute, rivalry and tribalism as a myriad of groups and belief systems are pitted against each other: ultra-Orthodox Jews and secular Jews; Isra... read more
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gri... read more
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In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand how we have arrived at such disorder. He explores three different but related aspects of disorder: intellectual (manifested in an unleashing of statements on identity that allow no possibility of peaceful co-existence or debate), economic and financial (that is exhausting the earth's resources), and climatic (the result of turning a blind eye to the consequences of rampant industrialization). Instead ... read more
Between 1856 and 1876, five explorers, all British, took on the seemingly impossible task of discovering the source of the White Nile. Showing exceptional courage and extraordinary resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Samuel Baker, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and their reputations in the name of this quest. They journeyed through East and Central Africa into unmapped territory, discovered the great lakes, Tanganyika and Victoria, navigated the upper Nile and the Congo, and suffered the r... read more
The relationship between Jews and Muslims has been a flashpoint that affects stability in the Middle East and has consequences around the globe. This book challenges the standard media portrayal and presents an account of hope, opportunity, fear, and terror that have characterized these two people through the 1,400 years of their history.
With nuclear aspirations, an Islamic theocracy, oil riches, and a leadership given to inflammatory rhetoric, Iran is the bogeyman of global politics. This book presents an account of a vast conflict being fought under the public's radar. It provides insight into the power struggle at the heart of the Middle East.
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