Download or read book The Last American in Damascus An Autobiography written by Thomas L. Webber and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in my life, I was shot at as I approached the Beirut shore. I know now that if they wanted to kill me, they could have that night. This is just one of the many adventures the author has faced during his 44 years of living and working in the volatile Middle East. As the famous writer and lecturer, Helen Keller once wrote: "Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all". In the author's own lifetime he has experienced a profuse number of adventures, and many were truly amazing life-changing episodes, in fact so many that he has decided to share them by writing his third book, The Last American in Damascus.
Download or read book The Last American in Damascus written by Thomas L Webber and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in my life, I was shot at as I approached the Beirut shore. I know now that if they wanted to kill me, they could have that night. This is just one of the many adventures the author has faced during his 44 years of living and working in the volatile Middle East. As the famous writer and lecturer, Helen Keller once wrote: “Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all”. In the author’s own lifetime he has experienced a profuse number of adventures, and many were truly amazing life-changing episodes, in fact so many that he has decided to share them by writing his third book, The Last American in Damascus.
Download or read book The Last American in Damascus written by Thomas L. Webber and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in my life, I was shot at as I approached the Beirut shore. I know now that if they wanted to kill me, they could have that night. This is just one of the many adventures the author has faced during his 44 years of living and working in the volatile Middle East. As the famous writer and lecturer, Helen Keller once wrote: ?Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all?. In the author?s own lifetime he has experienced a profuse number of adventures, and many were truly amazing life-changing episodes, in fact so many that he has decided to share them by writing his third book.
Download or read book Damascus Station A Novel written by David McCloskey and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2022 ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel "Damascus Station is simply marvelous storytelling.…[A] stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre." —Financial Times A CIA officer and his recruit arrive in war-ravaged Damascus to hunt for a killer in this page-turner that offers the "most authentic depiction of modern-day tradecraft in print." (Navy SEAL sniper and New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr). CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad’s recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.
Download or read book Damascus Countdown written by Joel C. Rosenberg and published by Tyndale House Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Israel declares war on Iran, CIA operative David Shirazi infiltrates the Iranian regime and intercepts information indicating that two Iranian nuclear warheads have been moved to a secure and undisclosed location.
Download or read book Command and Control written by Eric Schlosser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine “Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.
Download or read book A Disappearance in Damascus written by Deborah Campbell and published by Picador. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Winner of the Freedom to Read Award Winner of the Hubert Evans Prize In the midst of an unfolding international crisis, renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Campbell’s frank, personal account of a journey through fear and the triumph of friendship and courage is as riveting as it is illuminating. The story begins in 2007, when Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a “fixer”—providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam has fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian center. She supports her husband and two children while working to set up a makeshift school for displaced girls. Strong and charismatic, she has become an unofficial leader of the refugee community. Campbell is inspired by Ahlam’s determination to create something good amid so much suffering, and the two women become close friends. But one morning, Ahlam is seized from her home in front of Campbell’s eyes. Haunted by the prospect that their work together has led to her friend’s arrest, Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find Ahlam—all the while fearing she could be next. The compelling story of two women caught up in the shadowy politics behind today’s most searing conflict, A Disappearance in Damascus reminds us of the courage of those who risk their lives to bring us the world’s news.
Download or read book Damascus Gate written by Robert Stone and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-05-04 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American journalist Christopher Lucas is investigating religious fanatics when he discovers a plot to bomb the sacred Temple Mount.
Download or read book Blood Libel written by Ronald Florence and published by Other Press (NY). This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is great material, and Florence...handles it with dramatic flair....An excellent work of popular history."--"Publishers Weekly" Damascus, February 1840. A Capuchin monk and his servant disappear without a trace. By the end of the day, rumors point to the Jewish community, a tiny minority in the city's rich but delicate balance of religions and ethnicities. Within weeks, the rumors turn to accusations of ritual murder, the infamous "blood libel." Fiendish tortures in the pasha's dungeons, coerced confessions, manufactured evidence, and the fury of the crowds are enough to convict the accused Jews. By the time the rest of the world learns of the events in Damascus, the entire leadership of the Jewish community is awaiting execution. Narrating with a novelist's skill, Ronald Florence recounts the unexpected twists of the story and the strange alliances forged by mutual fears and misperceptions as the Damascus affair became a worldwide cause--the Moslem majority were not the accusers of the Jews; the French consul, representative of the nation that had first recognized Jews as citizens, was the chief prosecutor; the Sultan defended the accused Jews; the liberal London "Times" considered whether the accusations might be true. The legacies of the growing rift among the minorities, the dominant Arab society, and the outside world are the divisions in the Middle East today and the myths that continue to feed and sustain anti-Semitism. "Blood Libel" is a gripping historical narrative that explores the fragile social fabric of a society as it stretches and ultimately rips into shreds of hatred and fear.
Download or read book The Home That Was Our Country written by Alia Malek and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alia Malek weaves a lyrical narrative around the history of her family's apartment building in the heart of Damascus, the many lives that crossed in the stairwell, and how the fates of her neighbors reflect the fate of her country. At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians--the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds--who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country. Restoring her family's home as the country comes apart, she learns how to speak the coded language of oppression that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about Syria's future. The Home That Was Our Country is a deeply researched, personal journey that shines a delicate but piercing light on Syrian history, society, and politics. Teeming with insights, the narrative weaves acute political analysis with a century of intimate family history, delivering an unforgettable portrait of the Syria that is being erased.
Download or read book Damascus Nights written by Rafik Schami and published by Interlink Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rafik Schami's award-winning novel. In the classical Arab tradition of tale-telling, here is a magical book that celebrates the power of storytelling, delightfully transformed for modern sensibilities by an award-winning author. The time is present-day Damascus, and Salim the coachman, the city's most famous storyteller, is mysteriously struck dumb. To break the spell, seven friends gather for seven nights to present Salim with seven wondrous "gifts"—seven stories of their own design. Upon this enchanting frame of tales told in the fragrant Arabian night, the words of the past grow fainter, as ancient customs are yielding to modern turmoil. While the hairdresser, the teacher, the wife of the locksmith sip their tea and pass the water pipe, they swap stories about the magical and the mundane: about djinnis and princesses, about contemporary politics and the difficulties of bargaining in a New York department store. And as one tale leads to another... and another... all of Damascus appears before your eyes, along with a vision of storytelling—and talk—as the essence of friendship, of community, of life. A sly and graceful work, a delight to readers young and old, Damascus Nights is, according to Publishers Weekly, "a highly atmospheric, pungent narrative."
Download or read book Divas of Damascus Road written by Michelle Stimpson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A family of Christian women battle issues of unwanted pregnancies, overeating, mental illness and traumatic childhoods, hoping that--like Saul's encounter with God on the road to Damascus--their lives will turn around.
Download or read book The Damascus Road written by Jay Parini and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a superb historical novel of the Apostle Paul, whose tireless and epic preaching of the message of Jesus brought Christianity into existence and changed human history forever. In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had some sort of blinding vision, a profound conversion experience that transformed Paul into the most effective and influential messenger Christianity has ever had. In The Damascus Road novelist Jay Parini brings this fascinating and ever-controversial figure to full human life, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions. In relating Paul's epic journeys, both geographical and spiritual, he unfolds a vivid panorama of the ancient world on the verge of epochal change. And in the alternating voice of the Gospel writer Luke, Paul's travel companion, scribe, and ghostwriter, a cooler perspective on his actions and beliefs emerges -- ironic but still filled with wonder at Paul's unshakable commitment to the Christ and his divinity.
Download or read book Grayback written by S. H. Ford and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-01-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertram Tambling is the last boy on earth to be afraid of the dark... until he goes blind.Cunning spy, scout, and deadly sharpshooter, Bertram is highly prized by the Confederate Army. But when a mission goes horribly wrong, he finds himself blind--and in the wrong uniform. Now he must fight for his true identity without losing his life.Bertram “Ben" Tambling is skilled as a sharpshooter—a skill he eventually finds to be a curse. Asked to take on a mission that takes him behind enemy lines, he is wounded while in an enemy uniform. Taken in by distant relations who are unknowing of his true loyalties, Ben must learn to “follow where fate leads him.” He eventually finds himself in the Monadnock Valley of New Hampshire where he finds friendship, family, and love, yet does he truly belong? Deep down his adventurous spirit and beloved South keep calling and when he is well enough to return he must decide where fate is calling him to be. Readers will be taken from the battlefields of Virginia to the cities of New England—and back again. Rich with historical detail yet fast paced. Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Download or read book Our Man in Damascus Elie Cohn written by Eli Ben-Hanan and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Red Line written by Joby Warrick and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Red Line, Joby Warrick, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags, shares the thrilling unknown story of America’s mission in Syria: to find and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and keep them out of the hands of the Islamic State. In August 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When secret intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, President Obama warned that doing so would cross “a red line.” Assad did it anyway, bombing the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with sarin gas, killing hundreds of civilians, and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular war in the Middle East. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out. So began an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war. The extraordinary little-known effort is a triumph for the Americans, but soon Russia’s long game becomes clear: it will do anything to preserve Assad’s rule. As America’s ability to control events in Syria shrinks, the White House learns that ISIS, building its caliphate in Syria’s war-tossed territory, is seeking chemical weapons for itself, with an eye to attack the West. Drawing on astonishing original reporting, Warrick crafts a character-driven narrative that reveals how the United States embarked on a bold adventure to prevent one catastrophe but could not avoid a tragic chain of events that led to another.
Download or read book We Are Not One written by Eric Alterman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling historian uncovers the surprising roots of America’s long alliance with Israel and its troubling consequences Fights about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, have long been a staple of both Jewish and American political culture. But despite these arguments’ significance to American politics, American Jewish life, and to Israel itself, no one has ever systematically examined their history and explained why they matter. In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces this debate from its nineteenth-century origins. Following Israel’s 1948–1949 War of Independence (called the “nakba” or “catastrophe” by Palestinians), few Americans, including few Jews, paid much attention to Israel or the challenges it faced. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, however, almost overnight support for Israel became the primary component of American Jews’ collective identity. Over time, Jewish organizations joined forces with conservative Christians and neoconservative pundits and politicos to wage a tenacious fight to define Israel’s image in the US media, popular culture, Congress, and college campuses. Deeply researched, We Are Not One reveals how our consensus on Israel and Palestine emerged and why, today, it is fracturing.
