Download or read book The Wolf of Baghdad written by Carol Isaacs and published by Myriad Editions. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Enthralling and moving. It is magical.'— Claudia Roden In the 1940s a third of Baghdad's population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had been expelled, killed or had escaped. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited. Transported by the power of music to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its ghost-like inhabitants who are revealed as long-gone family members. As she explores the city, journeying through their memories and her imagination, she at first sees successful integration, and cultural and social cohesion. Then the mood turns darker with the fading of this ancient community's fortunes. This beautiful wordless narrative is illuminated by the words and portraits of her family, a brief history of Baghdadi Jews and of the making of this work. Says Isaacs: 'The Finns have a word, kaukokaipuu, which means a feeling of homesickness for a place you've never been to. I've been living in two places all my life; the England I was born in, and the lost world of my Iraqi-Jewish family's roots.'

Download or read book The Sirens of Baghdad written by Yasmina Khadra and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third novel in Yasmina Khadra's bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion. A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. The Sirens of Baghdad is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist. “Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book The Wolf and the Watchman A Father a Son and the CIA written by Scott C. Johnson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the National Book Award and named a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year. Growing up, Scott C. Johnson always suspected that his father was different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy, one of the CIA’s most trusted officers. At first the secret was thrilling. But over time Scott began to have doubts. How could a man so rigorously trained to deceive and manipulate simply turn off those skills at home? His father had been living a double life for so long that his lies were hard to separate from the truth. When Scott embarked on a career as a foreign correspondent, he found himself returning to many of the troubled countries of his youth. In the dusty streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan, amid the cold urbanity of Yugoslavia, and down the mysterious alleys of Mexico City, he came face to face with his father’s murky past—and his own complicity in it. Scott learned that his chosen profession was not so different from his father’s: they both worked to gain people’s trust and to uncover their secrets. The only difference was what they did with that information. In the aftermath of 9/11, father and son found themselves on assignment in Afghanistan and the Middle East, one as a CIA contractor, the other as a reporter for Newsweek. Suddenly, an unsettled Scott was forced to keep his father’s secret all over again. As their professional lives collided, Scott and his father inched toward a personal reckoning, struggling to overcome a lifetime of suspicion and deception. The Wolf and the Watchman is a provocative, meditative account of truth and duplicity, of manipulation and loyalty. It is also a moving, intensely personal portrait of a bond between father and son that endured in the shadow of one of the world’s most secretive and unforgiving institutions. * PEN Center USA Award Finalist Reading group guide available.

Download or read book The Sheikh of Baghdad written by Adnan Alkaissy and published by Triumph Books (IL). This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sheikh of Baghdad is the true story of one man's journey across two continents to find his place in the world. It is an unbelievable rags-to-riches-to-rags story with wrestling as a metaphor for life itself. Adnan Alkaissy, better known as professional wrestling's General Adnan, can finally, safely, tell his story now that Saddam Hussein-a childhood companion, powerful associate, then threat to Alkaissy and his family-is in custody awaiting trial. An odd juxtaposition of two very different worlds, this incomparable life story encompasses both the hilarious tales of what life was like in and out of the squared circle of professional wrestling and stories of heartache and despair from a man whose country is trying to find itself once again. It is also the story of a man's desire to achieve closure on a separate life lived many years ago. Finally, it is a story about a man, now in his midsixties, who wants nothing more than to go home to a free and democratic Iraq so that he can finally introduce his new family to his old one. The Sheikh of Baghdad is the story of an Iraqi American trying to make a difference in this post-9-11 world by telling his story to provide a small ray of hope for peace in the tumultuous Middle East. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Spymaster of Baghdad written by Margaret Coker and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad comes the gripping and heroic story of an elite, top-secret team of unlikely spies who triumphed over ISIS. The Spymaster of Baghdad tells the dramatic yet intimate account of how a covert Iraqi intelligence unit called “the Falcons” came together against all odds to defeat ISIS. The Falcons, comprising ordinary men with little conventional espionage background, infiltrated the world’s most powerful terrorist organization, ultimately turning the tide of war against the terrorist group and bringing safety to millions of Iraqis and the broader world. Centered around the relationship between two brothers, Harith al-Sudani, a rudderless college dropout who was recruited to the Falcons by his all-star younger brother Munaf, and their eponymous unit commander Abu Ali, The Spymaster of Baghdad follows their emotional journey as Harith volunteers for the most dangerous mission imaginable. With piercing lyricism and thrilling prose, Coker’s deeply-reported account interweaves heartfelt portraits of these and other unforgettable characters as they navigate the streets of war-torn Baghdad and perform heroic feats of cunning and courage. The Falcons’ path crosses with that of Abrar, a young, radicalized university student who, after being snubbed by the head of the Islamic State’s chemical weapons program, plots her own attack. At the near-final moment, the Falcons intercept Abrar’s deadly plan to poison Baghdad’s drinking water and arrest her in the middle of the night—just one of many covert counterterrorism operations revealed for the first time in the book. Ultimately, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a page-turning account of wartime espionage in which ordinary people make extraordinary sacrifices for the greater good. Challenging our perceptions of terrorism and counterterrorism, war and peace, Iraq and the wider Middle East, American occupation and foreign intervention, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a testament to the power of personal choice and individual action to change the course of history—in a time when we need such stories more than ever.

Download or read book Banking on Baghdad written by Edwin Black and published by Dialog Press. This book was released on 2021-04-10 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Banking on Baghdad, New York Times and international bestselling author Edwin Black chronicles the dramatic and tragic history of a land long the center of world commerce and conflict. Tracing the involvement of Western governments and militaries, as well as oil, banking, and other corporate interests, Black pinpoints why today, just as throughout modern history, the world needs Iraq's resources and remains determined to acquire and protect them. Banking on Baghdad almost painfully documents the many ways Iraq's recent history mirrors its tumultuous past.

Download or read book The Cailiffs of Baghdad Georgia written by Mary Helen Stefaniak and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-08-23 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stefaniak pens a big-hearted story of a Depression-era small town turned upside down by a worldly teacher.

Download or read book Baghdad Noir written by Muhsin al-Ramli and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique anthology of Iraqi noir fiction collects fourteen original stories of crime, conspiracy, regret, and revenge in the capital of Iraq. The centuries-old city of Baghdad has known many rulers, many troubles, and many crimes. But while most Iraqis would agree that their life has always been noir, there has not been a literary tradition to capture this aspect of the culture. By commissioning the fourteen stories collected here—most by Iraqi writers, all by authors familiar with Baghdad—editor Samuel Shimon and Akashic Books have created what may be the first anthology of Iraqi crime fiction ever assembled. Here you will read of life in Baghdad both during and after the Saddam Hussein era, with stories of fear in the shadow of a ruthless dictator; kidnappings in the time of U.S. occupation; detectives who investigate political conspiracies; and tales of revenge, assassination, mental illness, and family struggle in the war-torn City of Peace. Baghdad Noir includes brand-new stories by Sinan Antoon, Ali Bader, Mohammed Alwan Jabr, Nassif Falak, Dheya al-Khalidi, Hussain al-Mozany, Layla Qasrany, Hayet Raies, Muhsin al-Ramli, Ahmed Saadawi, Hadia Said, Salima Salih, Salar Abdoh, and Roy Scranton.

Download or read book The Golden Horsemen of Baghdad written by Saviour Pirotta and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by bestselling author Saviour Pirotta, this fast-paced story is set in the Islamic Golden Age when Baghdad was the largest and most dazzling city in the world. Perfect for fans of thrilling adventure. Thirteen-year-old Jabir is hoping to save his family from being made homeless by finding work in Baghdad. Famished after his long journey to the city, Jabir is caught stealing bread and sent to prison. Luckily, one of the guards there notices that he has a gift for carving wooden models and he is released on the orders of the grand caliph Harun al Rashid himself. In return Jabir must carve twelve golden horsemen, a gift from the caliph to the emperor Charlemagne. But someone is determined to stop Jabir from completing the work and he will stop at nothing, not even arson, to achieve his aim. Can Jabir and his friend Yasmina finish the horsemen or will Jabir be sent back to prison? This exciting and readable adventure story is packed with great characters and insight into Islamic civilisation and the historic culture of the Middle East circa AD 900, a period which is now studied in the National Curriculum. The Flashbacks series offers dramatic stories set in key moments of history, perfect for introducing children to historical topics.

Download or read book Staring Down the Wolf written by Mark Divine and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leadership book by former Navy SEAL and New York Times bestselling author Mark Divine, Staring Down the Wolf focuses on harnessing the principles of purpose and discipline in life to achieve success. What does it take to command a team of elite individuals? It requires a commitment to seven key principles: Courage, Trust, Respect, Growth, Excellence, Resiliency, and Alignment. All of these are present in an elite team which commits to them deeply in order to forge the character worthy of uncommon success. Retired Navy SEAL Commander, entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author Mark Divine (founder of SEALFIT, NavySeal.com, and Unbeatable Mind) reveals what makes the culture of an elite team, and how to get your own team to commit to serve at an elite level. Using principles he learned on the battlefield, training SEALs, and in his own entrepreneurial and growth company ventures, Mark knows what it is to lead elite teams, and how easily the team can fail by breaching these commitments. Elite teams challenge themselves to step up everyday to do the uncommon. Developing the principles yourself and aligning your team around these commitments will allow you to thrive in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) environments, no matter your background or leadership experience. Drawing from his twenty years leading SEALs, and twenty five years of success and failure in entrepreneurship and ten years coaching corporate clients, Mark Divine shares a very unique perspective that will allow you to unlock the tremendous power of your team. “Mark Divine has a gift for creating highly effective dynamic teams. Mark interleaves key aspects of leadership, mental toughness, resiliency and cultivating higher plains of existence into a foundational concept of being an authentic ‘Leader of leaders.’ This book is indispensable for anyone looking to lead, build and foster an elite culture.” –Mike Magaraci, retired Force Master Chief of Naval Special Warfare “From his time as a Commander in the SEAL Teams to building several successful multimillion dollar businesses, Mark Divine is an authority on building elite teams and leaders capable of tapping their fullest potential.” –David Goggins, Retired Navy SEAL, author of New York Times Bestseller Can’t Hurt Me "To grow to your fullest capacity in your life and as a leader, we need to challenge ourselves. There’s no one I know who’s challenged himself more than Mark Divine. He’s the perfect visionary to help get you out of your comfort zone and shattering the status quo.” –Joe De Sena, Founder and CEO of Spartan

Download or read book The Blue Wolf written by Frederic Dion and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winner of one of France's most prestigious literary prizes, The Blue Wolf is the epic historical novel of Genghis Khan At the height of his power, Genghis Khan unified four hundred tribes and was feared by men from Baghdad to Peking. Like Napoleon, he imposed a pitiless regime on the people he subjugated; like Caesar, he led his troops with a merciless code of conduct. But even the greatest of rulers have a beginning. In Frederic Dion's The Blue Wolf, the father of Temudjin, the future Genghis Khan, has been murdered by the Tartars, the most feared enemy of his clan. The young Temudjin burns to regain his rightful inheritance, and as a young warrior he leads a series of bloodthirsty battles where he suppresses and integrates the many tribes of his land, until at last he is crowned King of the Oceans, the Blue Wolf—Genghis Khan. But soon, his hunger for power becomes increasingly violent and leads him to experience overwhelming paranoia and a growing mistrust of old friends and allies. In The Blue Wolf, Frederic Dion writes of battles, horses, and of a great civilization. This is the searingly powerful novel of a ferocious ruler's roots and his life in the endless and rugged lands of the steppes.

Download or read book Wolf Dreams written by Yasmina Khadra and published by Amazon Publishing. This book was released on 2006-06 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book that best describes how an Islamic Fundimentalist is formed." New York Times How does a handsome young man who keeps company with poets and dreams of fame and fortune in the movie business turn into a brutal killer who massacres women and children without turning a hair? The story follows Nafa Walid, heart-throb of the Casbah, as he gradually loses control of his destiny and becomes drawn into the Islamic Fundamentalist movement. Wolf Dreams illustrates what happens when disillusion intersects with the persuasive voice of fundamentalism and the chaos of civil war.

Download or read book Armed Madhouse written by Greg Palast and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-08-30 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Razor sharp research ... shows why every US citizen should be quaking in their boots’ Metro, Books of the Year ‘Bill Hicks with a press pass’ The List Award-winning guerrilla journalist Greg Palast has gone where most have been too scared to unearth the ugly truth about the haves and have-mores who rule our world ... America. Here he reports from behind enemy lines to reveal just how bad it’s got in a dangerous regime: how elections are bought and free speech comes at a price. How citizens are ruled by fear. And how our brave new globalized world means the poor get hammered, while corporations silently buy up the planet. It’s not pretty – but it’s all true ... ‘Palast is one of the few journalists writing who has both the anger and the wit to offer himself up as a persuasive – and more importantly, readable – voice of the left’ Observer ‘A rollercoaster ride from Baghdad to New Orleans and Osama bin Laden’s cave to the back rooms of the Pentagon’ Big Issue ‘Very funny ... For anyone who thinks that no-one from the US knows what’s going on, Palast is the perfect riposte’ Guardian

Download or read book Disarming Iraq written by Hans Blix and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2004-03-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war against Iraq divided opinion throughout the world and generated a maelstrom of spin and counterspin. The man at the eye of the storm, and arguably the only key player to emerge from it with his integrity intact, was Hans Blix, head of the UN weapons inspection team. This is Dr. Blix’s account of what really happened during the months leading up to the declaration of war in March 2003. In riveting descriptions of his meetings with Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Kofi Annan, he conveys the frustrations, the tensions, the pressure and the drama as the clock ticked toward the fateful hour. In the process, he asks the vital questions about the war: Was it inevitable? Why couldn’t the U.S. and UK get the backing of the other member states of the UN Security Council? Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction? What does the situation in Iraq teach us about the propriety and efficacy of policies of preemptive attack and unilateral action? Free of the agendas of politicians and ideologues, Blix is the plainspoken, measured voice of reason in the cacophony of debate about Iraq. His assessment of what happened is invaluable in trying to understand both what brought us to the present state of affairs and what we can learn as we try to move toward peace and security in the world after Iraq.

Download or read book Welcome to the New World written by Jake Halpern and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a full-length book, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic story of a refugee family who fled the civil war in Syria to make a new life in America After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan. Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking. Delivered with warmth and intimacy, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan's Welcome to the New World is a wholly original view of the immigrant experience, revealing not only the trials and successes of one family but showing the spirit of a town and a country, for good and bad.

Download or read book The Baghdad Eucharist written by Sinan Antoon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in 2010, Hail Mary unfolds over 24 hours in Baghdad. The events of the novel take place around two characters from an Iraqi Christian family, drawn together under the same roof by the chaos in the country. Youssef is an elderly man who is alone. He refuses to emigrate and leave the house he built, where he has lived for half a century. He still clings to hope and memories of a happy past. Maha is a young woman whose life has been torn apart by the sectarian violence. Her family has been made homeless and become separated from her, resulting in her living as a refugee in her own country, lodging in Youssef's house; with her husband she waits to emigrate from a country she feels does not want her.

Download or read book Paying the Land written by Joe Sacco and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, POP MATTERS, COMICS BEAT, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY From the “heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist), a masterful work of comics journalism about indigenous North America, resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around, and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life. In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. The mining boom is only the latest assault on indigenous culture: Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to “remove the Indian from the child”; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture. Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale, Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and priests, to tell a sweeping story about money, dependency, loss, and culture—recounted in stunning visual detail by one of the greatest cartoonists alive.