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Middle East
Here are some of our our favorite guides and literature on the Middle East that we have previously featured on our home page.

A Season in Mecca, Narrative of a Pilgrimage Abdellah Hammoudi ( Hill and Wang, $26.95) An insightful and in-depth look at the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca from the perspective of a Moroccan born professor at Princeton. While Muslim, he brings an anthropologist’s eye to the Hajj which makes this a particularly perceptive and timely work and gives it an informed insider/outsider viewpoint. - ADD TO CART	Origins: A Memoir Amin Maalouf ( Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.00) Amin Maalouf's father died on the same date as his paternal grandfather. This seemingly insignificant coincidence changes Maalouf years later. Once a man content with, yet suspicious of his oral family history, he becomes determined to sift through every family story and letter to discover the true history of his paternal grandfather, Boutros. Spanning some fifty years and journeying from a Christian village in Lebanon, to politically chaotic Havana, Cuba, author Amin Maalouf lovingly and proudly narrates the lost history of his grandfather Boutros's life. - ADD TO CART
Lebanon, Lebanon Anna Wilson, editor ( Saqi Books, $18.95) Perhaps partly due to the American mediaï¿½s short attention span, the death of over 1000 people and the displacement of over 700,000 in Lebanon last summer is already a distant memory for most Americans. From Harold Pinterï¿½s ferocious poem through the illustrations, fiction and memoirs of international writers and artists, Lebanon, Lebanon is a necessary corrective and a moving response to the month long bombardment of Lebanon that began on July 12, 2006. Many pieces, from previously published works, reference themes of loss, fear, anger or nostalgia. Much work was made during the July war and reflects the immediacy of the situation. Contributors include John le Carrï¿½, Tahar Ben Jelloun, John Berger, Mona Hatoun, Orhan Pamuk, V.S. Naipaul, Margaret Drabble, Robert Fisk, Etel Adnan, Yann Martel and Mahmud Darwish. - ADD TO CART	Welcome to the Bethlehem Star Hotel: An Account of Life in Palestine with Descriptions of People, Places and Incidents Ben Granby ( Garrett County Press, $12.95) Travelogues allow us to visit other places without leaving the comforts of home which is especially important when the place they depict is a war-torn land that may not be entirely safe to visit. Ben Granby shows us a Palestine that we can experience safely via his experiences working for a human rights organization during 2003. The pictures he paints of everyday life are shockingly real accounts of regular people trying to get by while bombs land around them. Their buildings are littered with bullet holes and their ability to perform simple daily tasks is limited. Yet they continue to live as vibrant, intelligent people, interested in the outside world. This pocket sized book also includes photos Granby shot such as kids proudly showing off found artillery, fortified checkpoints, and funeral processions with destroyed buildings as their backdrops. - ADD TO CART
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran Christopher de Bellaigue ( Harper Collins, $13.95) Revolution is upheaval. What happens to a revolution after the revolution subsides and institutions are codified? What becomes of its revolutionaries? In this layered and shifting story, de Bellaigue recounts Iran's history, the author's life in Tehran and the stories of these once young and ardent revolutionaries 25 years later. Disillusioned or no longer ardent, they still manage to recall their devotion to God and martyrdom. In an Iran where political life has become ossified, de Bellaigue captures his subjects’ mix of exhaustion, apathy and perserverance. - ADD TO CART	The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands Jeremy Salt ( University of California Press, $29.95) This elegantly written volume tackles the construction of the “west”- in fact the idea of civilization itself, and how both of these concepts have shaped, transformed and devastated what we know as the Middle East. The book is built around critical episodes in the modern history of the Middle East, starting with the borders imposed by the French and the British that marked both the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the disruption of the nomadic Arab routes; concluding with the quagmire of the Iraq, and possibly Iran. Salt’s writing is at once sharp and illuminating and he is able to communicate vast tracts of history and the complexities of regional politics and culture with clarity and insight. - ADD TO CART
Palestine:The Special Edition Joe Sacco ( Fantagraphics, hardback, $29.95) In the mid-1990s, Joe Sacco's Palestine set a precedent for graphic journalism, earning him an American Book Award in 1996 and more importantly by blowing the minds of readers everywhere. With the intent to interview as many Palestinians and Israeli Jews as possible, Sacco often found himself in over his head. The stories are all there, from soldiers, refugees, prisoners, displaced farmers, and wounded and half-murdered families. The characters leap from the page and their personal accounts are unforgettable. Despite the harsh realities of a brutalized people, Saccoï¿½s work is not without wit and humorous insight, even at times making fun of his own 'comic book effort.' But make no mistake; this is a work of nonfiction, a 285+ page monumental feat of reporting, writing, and illustrating. As the interdependent conflicts in the Middle East grow increasingly complex, Sacco's colossus graphic novel proves more relevant and important than ever. Available for the first time as a beautiful hard cover, and loaded with extras comparable to a Criterion Collection film, this Special Edition not only deserves a re-visit for those who know it but also stands as one of the most entertaining 'required reading' selections for those unfamiliar with it. Recommended for those naive or expert to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine also will convince the skeptics to the serious place in literature of graphic novels. - ADD TO CART	The Complete Persepolis Marjane Satrapi ( Pantheon, $24.95) This collection of both of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis graphic novels arrives just in time for the winter release of the Cannes award-winning animated movie, which features the voices of Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni. Persepolis is the coming of age memoir of an irrepressibly bright, hilarious and independent minded girl caught in the upheaval of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Persepolis transcends the typical cliches of genre: the comic book style is charming and evocative, opening up an Iran not usually apparent to Western outsiders. Satrapi blends personal moments of youthful rebellion against the confines of her liberal secular family, with the harsher realities of life as an outspoken precocious girl living under an oppressive regime. "This is a symbol of Western decadence!" two be-chadored Iranian matrons tell young Marjane, pointing at her Michael Jackson pin. "Not at all," Marjane protests, "It's Malcolm X!" - ADD TO CART
Basrayatha: The Story of a City Muhammad Khudayyir ( Verson, $15.95) For many of us, Basra is a city we think about only when the fighting breaks into our headlines. Muhammad Khudayyir, who was born in Basra and has spent his entire life there, bestows on us an altogether different city in this enthralling work, written in 1996 and newly translated. His Basra is a dreamscape, an inner geography: a compound of memoir, folktale, philosophical speculation and literary allusion. He draws on classic Arabic poetry, as well as modern literary urbanists such as Calvino, Cavafy and (to my astonishment) Foucault, in an effort to convey the city not only as it is, but as it has lived in the imagination of Iraqis for centuries. Of all the hundreds of books published on Iraq in recent years, this may be the only one that emerges from the culture of the country and the artistic life of its people. Khudayyir's intensely allusive and ornamented style, redolent of Arab literary traditions, may at first seem strange to the western reader; but isn't it time we learned to take the rest of the world (and especially Iraq) and its own terms, rather than ours? - ADD TO CART	Istanbul: Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk ( Alfred A. Knopf, $14.95) The Istanbul of Pamuk's youth of the 1950’s and 60’s is a decaying, hollowed out city. No longer an empire and with a tenuous nationalism, the people are unmoored. Ottoman mansions, reminders of the city's grandeur, burn or are pulled down regularly. Old Armenian and Greek homes are all dried out wood, the paint long peeled off. It is a melancholic city peopled by a melancholic people. In Istanbul, Pamuk discovers the neighborhoods and its great writers. He becomes a painter and he eventually falls in love. He writes, "I poured my soul in the city's streets, and there it still resides." Pamuk's family suffers a parallel disintegration to the city's: a dwindling fortune, a fragmented family with rifts, jealousies, and ever more modest apartments. The only constant for Pamuk, it seems, is the view of the Bosporous. Vintage photos of the city compliment Pamuk's masterful prose. - ADD TO CART
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape Raja Shehadeh ( Scribner, $15.00) Like many of us in the Bay Area, Raja Shehadeh loves to ramble in the hills and valleys that surround his home. Because he is Palestinian, and his home is the West Bank city of Ramallah, his walks are considerably more fraught with the weight of history than ours. This lovely, moving and original book is an account of six such walks, taken over the past quarter century, as the landscape of his childhood changed beyond recognition. An attentive and observant walker, he introduces us to the subtle variations of flora and fauna, of terraced hills and pastureland, in a landscape so often described by Western observers as barren wasteland. And he shows how that landscape is steadily transformed by Israeli settlements and the Israeli-only highways that lead to them, which are making that desert “bloom” with concrete and neon. Though it is suffused with dignified outrage, this is not at all a diatribe. Instead, Shehadeh gently leads us away from the abstractions and stereotypes that typify most discussions of this heart-rending land dispute and invites us to experience the land itself, the way it looks and smells, the way it feels under his hiking boots. If you think that everything that can be said about the topic has been said, you will find his book a revelation. - ADD TO CART	The Prince of the Marshes Rory Stewart ( Harcourt, $15.00) If you've read Rory Stewart's first book, The Places In Between, about his walk across a war ravaged Afghanistan, youï¿½ll have an idea of what to expect from The Prince of the Marshes. This volume, about a year spent attempting to make sense of the chaos in 'post' war Iraq as a provincial governor, is equally compelling and devastating. Stewart must navigate two disparate worlds - the complex web of medieval tribal and religious affiliations in the local Iraqi populace and the ineffectual and obtuse bureaucracy of the Coalition Provisional Authority. This is perhaps the first book about the current situation in Iraq from a true insiderï¿½s perspective. The author has experienced the reality behind the rhetoric and does not offer exit strategies or simplistic solutions where there are none, but rather illuminates a desperate situation with his trademark dry British wit and clear headed, elegant prose. The Prince of the Marshes places Stewart amongst the preeminent classic British adventure writers. More importantly it exposes the complexities of life in Iraq during a time of war. - ADD TO CART
Come Back to Afghanistan : A California Teenager’s Story Said Hyder Akbar ( Bloomsbury, $14.95) Akbar doesn’t seem to realize how privileged he is to be able to travel to Afghanistan at such a young age and at such an interesting time in their changing history. Yet his story is strangely intriguing. He grew up here in the Bay Area and always wanted to return to Afghanistan , a country he had only dreamed of since his parents fled with him and his siblings during the Soviet invasion. His writing style is a bit confusing and jumbled but the first hand accounts of important people and events in the new Afghanistan are fascinating regardless. - ADD TO CART	All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror Stephen Kinzer ( John Wiley & Sons, paperback, $14.95) The American sponsored overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, in 1953, ushered into power the monarchist Mohammad Reza Shah. Twenty-five years of brutal military dictatorship followed with the full support of successive U.S. administrations. The coup was the first post-World War II action under Allen Dulles' CIA directorship initiating a striking increase in U.S. covert operations. Conservative historians argue that the coup averted the spread of communism, but as Kinzer shows, it involved oil. Mossadegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry and crippled the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. A political dispute between Britain and Iran ensued that remained deadlocked until the the U.S. joined the dispute following Eisenhower’s election and the Dulles’ appointment. All the Shah's Men provides a good historical summary of Iran, and a riveting account of the moment by moment actions of various players involved in the coup. The coup is arguably the fundamental source for anti-Americanism in Iran, though Kinzer is a bit hyperbolic in his assertion that it is the source of the highly strained relations between the Middle East and the West. Politically questionable intrusions by the West in the Middle East preceded the coup by decades. Kinzer's treatment of Mossadegh as a man is a welcome balance, acknowledging both his flaws and strengths. - ADD TO CART
Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse Sylvain Cypel ( Other Press, $16.95) The original French title of Walled is Les Emmurï¿½s, a more telling and apt description of the political impasse Israel finds itself in today, 59 years after its founding and 40 years after it began the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The term les emmurï¿½s, 'those who are walled-in', is, of course, the term that author Cypel applies to the Israelis, as well as the Palestinians. In the heroic stories of its creation, its rallying around security at all costs and its ethnicism that excludes the ï¿½otherï¿½, Israel indeed finds itself at an impasse. Cypel is indebted to and sites much of the work of the ï¿½the new historiansï¿½, who have used state and military archives to clear up much of the distortions that are presented as facts. Though Cypel is very critical of the autocratic and corrupt Palestinian Authority, as a former 12 year resident of Israel and the son of a well-known French Zionist, his focus is on the current Israeli situation and its reverberations domestically and abroad. Detailed and well-footnoted, this is an accessible and powerful look at Israeli society. - ADD TO CART	Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? Ted Rall ( NBM Publishing, $22.95) In this collection Ted Rall is back. Part essays, part cartoons, Silk Road to Ruin weaves Rall's travels in Central Asia with the region's current political situation. Rall's central theme is that Central Asia, with its huge energy reserves, shifting alliances, crushing poverty and corruption will be the world's new major "powder keg." And, the U.S., with its numerous army bases and thousands of personnel will most likely suffer the blowback. But this book is not a study of geo-political machinations. Rall takes us to the Tajik national sport, Buzkashi, a violent form of polo, where a goat carcass is the ball in play. He introduces us to one of the world's most ridiculous but repressive dictators, Turkmenbashi, with whom the U.S. has a cordial relationship. (Turkmenistan has reserves of as much as five hundred thirty-five trillion cubic feet of natural gas.) Rall has been to the region seven times, as a backpacker, a guest of the U.S. State Department, and as a journalist. He writes with a sense of wry humor bordering on amusement. Yet he makes clear again and again how serious the situation there is. - ADD TO CART