Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

by Fareed Zakaria

"A work of tremendous originality and insight."— Washington Post . A national bestseller, including extended stays on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal , and Washington Post lists, this major work by Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria has been touted by the New York Times as "brave and ambitious...updated Tocqueville" and the Chicago Tribune as "essential reading for anyone worried... (more)

A History of the Modern Middle East

by William L. Cleveland

This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the Iranian Revolution and the Gulf War. After introducing the reader to the region's history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, Cleveland focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. While built... (more)

The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250-1382

The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250-1382

by Robert Irwin

For over two hundred and fifty years the Mamluks ruled one of the great territorial Empires of the Middle Ages, centered on Egypt and Syria and controlling, at times, most of the Middle East. Irwin now provides the first scholarly history of this period in any Western language. He makes clear the unique political system of the Mamluks, in which the governing class consisted of a white slave elite. At the... (more)

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

by Anthony Pagden

Spanning two and a half millennia, Anthony Pagden’s mesmerizing Worlds at War delves deep into the roots of the “clash of civilizations” between East and West that has always been a battle over ideas, and whose issues have never been more urgent. Worlds At War begins in the ancient world, where Greece saw its fight against the Persian Empire as one between freedom and slavery, between monarchy and democracy,... (more)

by T.E. Lawrence

Although 'continually and bitterly ashamed' that the Arabs had risen in revolt against the Turks as a result of fraudulent British promises of self-rule, Lawrence led them in a triumphant campaign which revolutionized the art of war. "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" recreates epic events with extraordinary vividness. In the words of E. M. Forster, 'Round this tent-pole of a military chronicle, T. E. has hung an... (more)

A Leap of Faith

by Noor

Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa Najeeb Halaby became the fourth wife of King Hussein at age 27. With her husband being not only Jordan's monarch but the spiritual leader of all Muslims, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. This moving memoir provides a timely look at one woman's story against a backdrop of 30 turbulent years: the displacement of over 1 million Palestinians by the... (more)

A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed new work by "one of Israel's most gifted and prolific authors" (Helen Epstein, The Forward) is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small... (more)

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