Middle East
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Afghan Solution
The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistn
Lucy Morgan Edwards
Published in time for the tenth anniversary of the Afghan war, this explosive book exposes how the West lost its chance to rout the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan. In late 2001, a group of Afghan tribal leaders met to plan how to topple the Taliban. Within weeks the plan was in tatters, thwarted by the West, and the group’s leader, Abdul Haq, assassinated by the Taliban. Lucy Morgan Edwards’s investigation into Haq’s tragic mission led her to Taliban ministers, warlords, spies… (more information)
Women in Israel
Race, Gender and Citizenship
Nahla Abdo
Women in Israel provides a fresh, gendered analysis of citizenship in Israel. Working from a framework of Israel as a settler-colonial regime, this important, insightful book presents historical and contemporary comparative approaches to the lives and experiences of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Palestinian Arab women citizens. Nahla Abdo shows that no solution to the problems of the region can be found without changing existing racial and gender boundaries to citizenship. ‘Nahla Abdo… (more information)
Out of the Frame
The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel
Ilan Pappe
Even before he wrote his bestselling book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, historian Ilan Pappe was a controversial figure in Israel. In Out of the Frame, he gives a full account of his break with mainstream Israeli scholarship and its consequences. Growing up in a conventional Israeli community influenced by the utopian visions of Theodor Herzl, Pappe was barely aware of the Nakbah in his high school years. Here he traces his journey of discovery from the whispers of Palestinian classmates… (more information)
Our Way to Fight
Peace-Work Under Siege in Israel-Palestine
Michael Riordon
Our Way to Fight follows the dangerous lives of non-violent peace activists in Israel and Palestine. It explores crises that stirred them to act, the risks they face, and small victories that sustain them. Michael Riordon takes us to thousand year-old olive groves, besieged villages, refugee camps, checkpoints and barracks. In the face of deepening conflict, Our Way to Fight offers courageous grassroots action on both sides of the wall, and points the way to a liveable future. These engaging stories… (more information)
More Bad News from Israel
Mike Berry, Greg Philo
Building on rigorous research by the world-renowned Glasgow University Media Group, More Bad News From Israel examines media coverage of the current conflict in the Middle East and the impact it has on public opinion. The book brings together senior journalists and ordinary viewers to examine how audiences understand the news and how their views are shaped by media reporting. In the largest study ever undertaken in this area, the authors focus on television news. They illustrate major differences… (more information)
Three Kings
The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II
Lloyd Gardner
From F.D.R. to L.B.J., Three Kings reveals a story of America’s scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Lloyd Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region to offer the first history of America’s efforts to supplant the British empire in the Middle East. From the… (more information)
Toxic Genre
The Iraqi War Films
Martin Baker
Over the last five years, a cycle of films has emerged addressing the ongoing Iraq conflict. Some became well-known and one of them, The Hurt Locker, won a string of Oscars. But many others disappeared into obscurity. What is it about these films that led Variety to dub them a ‘toxic genre’? Martin Barker analyses the production and reception of these recent Iraq war films. Among the issues he examines are the borrowing of soldiers’ YouTube styles of self-representation to… (more information)
Al-Qaeda
From Global Network to Local Franchise
Christina Hellmich
Al-Qaeda, the first transnational terrorist group of the 21st century, embodies the new enigmatic face of terrorism. Since perpetrating the most destructive act of terrorism to date on September 11th 2001, it has dominated discussions over national and international security. Yet, even now, despite what so-called ‘experts’ might claim, we know surprisingly little about it as an organization. What is the physical and ideological make-up of this group that features so prominently on our… (more information)
State of Islam
Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan
Saadia Toor
The State of Islam tells the story of Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the global rise of militant Islam. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined ‘political’ realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary… (more information)
Side by Side
Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine
Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Eyal Naveh
In 2000, a group of Israeli and Palestinian teachers gathered to address what to many people seemed an unbridgeable gulf between the two societies. Struck by how different the standard Israeli and Palestinian textbook histories of the same events were from one another, they began to explore how to “disarm” the teaching of the history of the Middle East in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms. The result is a riveting “dual narrative” of Israeli and Palestinian history. Side… (more information)
Road to Tahrir Square
Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak
Lloyd Gardner
When protesters in Egypt began to fill Cairo’s Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, and refused to leave until their demand that Hosni Mubarak step down was met, the politics of the region changed overnight. And the United States’ long friendship with the man who had ruled under emergency law for thirty years came starkly into question. From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brief meeting with King Farouk near the end of World War II to Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo and the recent… (more information)
Israeli Rejectionism
A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process
Zalman Amit, Daphna Levit
The Palestine-Israel conflict is one of the longest running and seemingly intractable confrontations in the modern world. This book delves deep into the ‘peace process’ to find out why so little progress has been made on the key issues. Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit find overwhelming evidence of Israeli rejectionism as the main cause for the failure of peace. They demonstrate that the Israeli leadership has always been against a fairly negotiated peace and have deliberately… (more information)
Palestinians in Israel
Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy
Ben White
Palestinians in Israel considers a key issue ignored by the official ‘peace process’ and most mainstream commentators: that of the growing Palestinian minority within Israel itself. What the Israeli right-wing calls ‘the demographic problem’ Ben White identifies as ‘the democratic problem’ which goes to the heart of the conflict. Israel defines itself not as a state of its citizens, but as a Jewish state, despite the substantial and increasing Palestinian population… (more information)
Arab Spring
Delayed Defiance and the End of Postcolonialism
Hamid Dabashi
This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East. In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have engulfed multiple countries and political climes from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen, were driven by a ‘Delayed Defiance’–a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism. Sketching a new geography… (more information)
Palestine Nakba
Decolonizing History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory
Nur Masalha
2012 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba–the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba. In the context of Palestinian oral history, it explores ‘social history from below’, subaltern narratives of memory and the formation of collective identity. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The… (more information)
Leila Khaled
Icon of Palestinian Liberation
Sarah Irving
Dubbed ‘the poster girl of Palestinian militancy’, Leila Khaled’s image flashed across the world after she hijacked a passenger jet in 1969. The picture of a young, determined looking woman with a checkered scarf, clutching an AK-47, was as era-defining as that of Che Guevara. In this intimate profile, based on interviews with Khaled and those who know her, Sarah Irving gives us the life-story behind the image. Key moments of Khaled’s turbulent life are explored, including… (more information)
Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt and the Middle East
Edited by Habib Ayeb, Ray Bush
What does it mean to be marginalized? Is it a passive condition that the disadvantaged simply have to endure? Or is it a manufactured label, re-produced and by its nature transitory? In the wake of the new Egyptian revolution, this insightful collection explores issues of power, politics and inequality in Egypt and the Middle East. It argues that the notion of marginality tends to mask the true power relations that perpetuate poverty and exclusion. It is these dynamic processes of political and… (more information)