Download or read book We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled written by Wendy Pearlman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONG-LISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL Reminiscent of the work of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an astonishing collection of intimate wartime testimonies and poetic fragments from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight. Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy and human rights. The government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard, while the stories told about them have been distorted by broad brush dread and political expediency. This fierce and poignant collection changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a breathtaking mosaic of first-hand testimonials from the frontlines. Some of the testimonies are several pages long, eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few sentences, poetic and aphoristic. Together, they cohere into an unforgettable chronicle that is not only a testament to the power of storytelling but to the strength of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.
Download or read book Voices of Jordan written by Rana Sweis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jordan's diverse socioeconomic make-up encapsulates, like no other Middle Eastern state, both the array of pressing short-term problems facing the region, and the underlying challenges that Arab states will need to face once the current spate of civil conflicts is over: meaningful youth employment, female participation in politics, and integration of refugees into society. This book tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including a political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a Jihadist and a female parliamentarian. The raw voices and everyday struggles of these people shine a fresh light on the politics, religion, and society of a culture coming to terms with the harsh reality of modernization and urbanization at a time of regional upheaval. With her deep knowledge of Jordan's landscape, language and culture, Rana Sweis sketches an intimate portrait of the intricacies and complexities of life in the Middle East. Rather than focusing on how individuals are affected by events in the region, she reveals a cast of characters shaping their own lives and times. Voices of Jordan shares those stories in all of their rich detail, offering a living, breathing social and political history.
Download or read book Violence Nonviolence and the Palestinian National Movement written by Wendy Pearlman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some national movements use violent protest and others nonviolent protest? Wendy Pearlman shows that much of the answer lies inside movements themselves. Nonviolent protest requires coordination and restraint, which only a cohesive movement can provide. When, by contrast, a movement is fragmented, factional competition generates new incentives for violence and authority structures are too weak to constrain escalation. Pearlman reveals these patterns across one hundred years in the Palestinian national movement, with comparisons to South Africa and Northern Ireland. To those who ask why there is no Palestinian Gandhi, Pearlman demonstrates that nonviolence is not simply a matter of leadership. Nor is violence attributable only to religion, emotions or stark instrumentality. Instead, a movement's organizational structure mediates the strategies that it employs. By taking readers on a journey from civil disobedience to suicide bombings, this book offers fresh insight into the dynamics of conflict and mobilization.
Download or read book Occupied Voices written by Wendy Pearlman and published by Nation Books. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Middle East peace process disintegrates and the second Palestinian Intifada begins, Wendy Pearlman, a young Jewish woman from the American Midwest travels to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a quest to talk to ordinary Palestinians. A remarkable narrative emerges from her conversations with doctors, artists, school kids, and families who have lost loved ones or watched their homes destroyed. Their stories, ranging from the humorous to the tragic, paint a profile of the Palestinians that is as honest as it is uncommon in the Western media: that of ordinary people who simply want to live ordinary lives. As Pearlman writes, "the personal stories and heartfelt reflections that I encountered did not expose a hatred of Jews or a yearning to push Israelis into the sea. Rather, they painted a portrait of a people who longed for precisely that which had inspired the first Israelis: the chance to be citizens in a country of their own."
Download or read book The Impossible Revolution written by al-Haj Saleh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a leftist dissident who spent sixteen years as a political prisoner and now lives in exile. He describes with precision and fervour the events that led to Syria’s 2011 uprising, the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war, and the ‘three monsters’ Saleh sees ‘treading on Syria’s corpse’: the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and Russia and the US. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assad’s army is now battling religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory, democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is beset on all sides. The Impossible Revolution is a powerful, compelling critique of Syria’s catastrophic war, which has profoundly reshaped the lives of millions of Syrians.
Download or read book Syria written by Dawn Chatty and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The dispossession and forced migration of nearly 50 per cent of Syria's population has produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. This new book places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have indelibly marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harbored millions from its neighboring lands, and Syrian society has been shaped by these diasporas. Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focusing first on the major forced migrations into Syria of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Iraqis. Drawing heavily on individual narratives and stories of integration, adaptation, and compromise, she shows that a local cosmopolitanism came to be seen as intrinsic to Syrian society. She examines the current outflow of people from Syria to neighboring states as individuals and families seek survival with dignity, arguing that though the future remains uncertain, the resilience and strength of Syrian society both displaced internally within Syria and externally across borders bodes well for successful return and reintegration. If there is any hope to be found in the Syrian civil war, it is in this history." -- Publisher's description
Download or read book The Bridge Home written by Padma Venkatraman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Readers will be captivated by this beautifully written novel about young people who must use their instincts and grit to survive. Padma infuses her story with hope and bravery that will inspire readers."--Aisha Saeed, author of the New York Times Bestseller Amal Unbound Four determined homeless children make a life for themselves in Padma Venkatraman's stirring middle-grade debut. Life is harsh on the teeming streets of Chennai, India, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge that's also the hideout of Muthi and Arul, two homeless boys, and the four of them soon form a family of sorts. And while making their living scavenging the city's trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to take pride in, too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.
Download or read book Triadic Coercion written by Wendy Pearlman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that harbor or aid nonstate actors, using threats and punishment to coerce host states into stopping those groups. Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili investigate this strategy, which they term triadic coercion. They explain why states pursue triadic coercion, evaluate the conditions under which it succeeds, and demonstrate their arguments across seventy years of Israeli history. This rich analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict, supplemented with insights from India and Turkey, yields surprising findings. Traditional discussions of interstate conflict assume that the greater a state’s power compared to its opponent, the more successful its coercion. Turning that logic on its head, Pearlman and Atzili show that this strategy can be more effective against a strong host state than a weak one because host regimes need internal cohesion and institutional capacity to move against nonstate actors. If triadic coercion is thus likely to fail against weak regimes, why do states nevertheless employ it against them? Pearlman and Atzili’s investigation of Israeli decision-making points to the role of strategic culture. A state’s system of beliefs, values, and institutionalized practices can encourage coercion as a necessary response, even when that policy is prone to backfire. A significant contribution to scholarship on deterrence, asymmetric conflict, and strategic culture, Triadic Coercion illuminates an evolving feature of the international security landscape and interrogates assumptions that distort strategic thinking.
Download or read book The Best Damn Answers to Life s Hardest Questions written by Tess Koman and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious and utterly relatable collection of flowcharts, rants, and lists about adulting. A humorous guide to adulthood in a collection of 54 charmingly illustrated flowcharts and pros-and-cons lists that each address an all-too-real question, from the mundane to the life-changing. Will I survive this hangover? (Probably not.) Should I cancel my plans? (YES! Cancel immediately.) Am I having a quarter-life crisis? (Probably.) Do I even like this person? (Nope, nope, nope.) This inspired book of humor disguised as invaluable advice is a gift to make anyone feel better, proving that every question, thought, and decision, no matter how ridiculous or irresponsible, is completely valid.
Download or read book Destroying a Nation written by Nikolaos Van Dam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this important book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria, Nikolaos van Dam, explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Asad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to an immense amount of destruction in the refined social fabric of what used to be the Syrian nation. Through an in-depth examination, van Dam traces political developments within the Asad regime and the various opposition groups from the Arab Spring to the present day, and provides a deeper insight into the conflict and the possibilities and obstacles for reaching a political solution.
Download or read book Joking About Jihad written by Gilbert Ramsay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can laughter really be used to undermine the appeal of terrorist groups? And should it be? Is there any truth in the stereotypical notions of fanaticism as humorless, and of humor as the antithesis of fanaticism? What is the deeper significance of the jihadi's status as an object of mockery in Arabic popular culture? Joking About Jihad explores this thicket of problems sprouting from one of the most basic--and supposedly most innocent--of human behaviors, and looks at how it has been applied to one of the least obviously laughable phenomena in the world today. Ramsay and Alkheder draw on original interviews and hitherto unexamined texts, combining insights from fields as diverse as politics, psychology, cultural studies, Islamic studies and humor research. Examining apparently spontaneous joking, professional comedy and even the jokes told by jihadis themselves, they show how Salafi jihad has been made laughable in the modern Arab world, and why it matters.
Download or read book The Politics of International Intervention written by Mandy Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically explores the practices of peacebuilding, and the politics of the communities experiencing intervention. The contributions to this volume have a dual focus. First, they analyse the practices of western intervention and peacebuilding, and the prejudices and politics that drive them. Second, they explore how communities experience and deal with this intervention, as well as an understanding of how their political and economic priorities can often diverge markedly from those of the intervener. This is achieved through theoretical and thematic chapters, and an extensive number of in-depth empirical case studies. Utilising a variety of conceptual frameworks and disciplines, the book seeks to understand why something so normatively desirable – the pursuit of, and building of, peace – has turned out so badly. From Cambodia to Afghanistan, Iraq to Mali, interventions in the pursuit of peace have not achieved the results desired by the interveners. But, rather, they have created further instability and violence. The contributors to this book explore why. This book will be of much interest to students, academics and practitioners of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, international intervention, statebuilding, security studies and IR in general.
Download or read book No Turning Back Life Loss and Hope in Wartime Syria written by Rania Abouzeid and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Rania Abouzeid has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict, daring to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story.” —Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Forever War Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Hailed by critics, No Turning Back masterfully “[weaves] together the lives of protestors, victims, and remorseless killers at the center of this century’s most appalling human tragedy” (Robert F. Worth). Based on more than five years of fearless, clandestine reporting, No Turning Back brings readers deep inside Bashar al-Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of the Islamic State. An utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters, No Turning Back shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s greatest humanitarian disasters. Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award for the best non-fiction book on international affairs and a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize.
Download or read book Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God written by Joe Coomer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-05-07 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine weeks after losing her husband, Charlotte escapes to a wooden motor yacht in New Hampshire, where her shipmates are an aging blue-haired widow, an emotional seventeen-year-old, and the ugliest dog in literature. A genuine bond develops among the three women, as their distinct personalities and paths cross and converge against the backdrop of emotional secrets, abuse, and the wages of old age. Off the boat, Charlotte, an archaeologist, joins a local excavation to uncover an ancient graveyard. Here she can indulge her passion for reconstructing the past, even as she tries to bury her own recent history. She comes to realize, however, that the currents of time are as fluid and persistent as the water that drifts beneath her comforting new home.
Download or read book The Blindness of the Heart written by Julia Franck and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The international phenomenon and winner of the German Book Prize. “A devastating novel about war, love, and the art of survival” (Marie Claire). Julia Franck’s unforgettable English-language debut, The Blindness of the Heart is a dark marvel of a novel by one of Europe’s freshest young voices—a family story spanning two world wars and several generations in a German family. In the devastating opening scene, a woman named Helene stands with her seven-year-old son in a provincial German railway station in 1945 amid the chaos of civilians fleeing west. Having survived with him through the horror and deprivation of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns. The story quickly circles back to Helene’s childhood with her sister Martha in rural Germany, which came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the First World War. Their father is sent to the eastern front, and their Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. As we follow Helene into adulthood, we watch riveted as the costs of survival and ill-fated love turn her into a woman capable of the unforgiveable. “Enthralling, richly imagined and remorseless.” —The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . . . The young woman at the center of Julia Franck’s acclaimed novel The Blindness of the Heart ranks among the most haunting characters to be found in European fiction about twentieth-century horrors . . . At times, the novel feels more like an eyewitness account than historical fiction.” —Vogue “Disturbing, original, and brilliant.” —Guardian (Best Books of 2009)
Download or read book The End of Men written by Hanna Rosin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for our times, as women are pulling together to demand their rights— A landmark portrait of women, men, and power in a transformed world. “Anchored by data and aromatized by anecdotes, [Rosin] concludes that women are gaining the upper hand." –The Washington Post Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But Hanna Rosin was the first to notice that this long-held truth is, astonishingly, no longer true. Today, by almost every measure, women are no longer gaining on men: They have pulled decisively ahead. And “the end of men”—the title of Rosin’s Atlantic cover story on the subject—has entered the lexicon as dramatically as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” once did. In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how our current state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future.
Download or read book The Gypsy Moth Summer written by Julia Fierro and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fierro doesn't just observe, she knows. Like all great novelists, she gives us the world." - Amy Bloom, bestselling author of Away and Lucky Us It is the summer of 1992 and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. Ravenous caterpillars disrupt early summer serenity on Avalon, an islet off the coast of Long Island--dropping onto novels left open on picnic blankets, crawling across the T-shirts of children playing games of tag and capture the flag in the island's leafy woods. The caterpillars become a relentless topic of island conversation and the inescapable soundtrack of the season. It is also the summer Leslie Day Marshall—only daughter of Avalon’s most prominent family—returns with her husband, a botanist, and their children to live in “The Castle,” the island's grandest estate. Leslie’s husband Jules is African-American, and their children bi-racial, and islanders from both sides of the tracks form fast and dangerous opinions about the new arrivals. Maddie Pencott LaRosa straddles those tracks: a teen queen with roots in the tony precincts of East Avalon and the crowded working class corner of West Avalon, home to Grudder Aviation factory, the island's bread-and-butter and birthplace of generations of bombers and war machines. Maddie falls in love with Brooks, Leslie’s and Jules’ son, and that love feels as urgent to Maddie as the questions about the new and deadly cancers showing up across the island. Could Grudder Aviation, the pride of the island—and its patriarch, the Colonel—be to blame? As the gypsy moths burst from cocoons in flocks that seem to eclipse the sun, Maddie’s and Brooks’ passion for each other grows and she begins planning a life for them off Avalon Island. Vivid with young lovers, gangs of anxious outsiders; a plotting aged matriarch and her husband, a demented military patriarch; and a troubled young boy, each seeking his or her own refuge, escape and revenge, The Gypsy Moth Summer is about love, gaps in understanding, and the struggle to connect: within families; among friends; between neighbors and entire generations.
