MidEast

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber , 3rd pr., 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, rubbed and edgeworn dust jacket. The autobiography of an intelligent, traditional Hausa woman. An excellent piece of ethnography. The author, the wife of social anthropologist, became Baba's friend in Nigeria. After many conversations between the two women, she agreed to dictate the story of her life. Name on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 250 pages, color illustrations by Mumford. Light bump to top of spine. Bright dust jacket. Not overtly political, Bagdad Journal presents portraits of life from all sides of the polarizing conflict. With sketch pad and notebook in hand, Mumford illuminates the routine activities of a nation in turmoil-from the individual soldiers of American platoons to Baghdad residents going about their daily lives amid the chaos surrounding them.

Softcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 1st Edition, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 480 pages. Softcover. Wrapper very good, french flaps, small bump to bottom of spine (see image). Pages clean. Binding good. Examines the nature and evolution of ruling bargains, the political systems to which they gave rise, the steady unraveling of the old systems and the structural consequences thereof, and the uprisings that have engulfed much of the Middle East since Dec. 2010.

Softcover. New York University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 349 pages. An in depth and scholarly report on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an essential actor on behalf of modern-day Kurds. The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq. Clean copy.

Softcover. Manchester University Press , 1st pbk, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages, b&w illustrations. During the Algerian War the French army engaged in the 'emancipation' of Muslim women as part of a strategy of subverting the nationalist movement whilst also inflicting widespread violence. First comprehensive study in English of the role of Muslim women during the Algerian war, bringing a unique interdisciplinary approach to the subject. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Travel Book Club, 1st, Book: Good, Hardcover, 233 pages, color frontispiece and 8 b&w plates by Mary Gordon West, endpapers map. Light shelfwear. No date but appears to be about 1940.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 868 pages, terra-cotta cloth covers, b&w illustrations, maps tables. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Istanbul, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 143 pages. Contents: 1. B. Beckman, Explaining democratization, notes on the concept of civil society. 2. I. Sunar, Civil society and Islam 3. S.J. Al-Azm, Is Islam secularizable. 4. B. Tibi, The cultural underpinning of civil society in Islamic civilization: Islam and democracy - bridges between the civilizations. 5. S.E. Ibrahim, From Taliban to Erbakan, The case of Islam, civil society and democracy.6. G. Therborn, Beyond civil society: Democratic experiences and their relevance to the "Middle East". 7. M. Sariolghalam, Prospects for civil society in the Middle East: An analysis of cultural impediments. 8. L. Koker, National identity and state legitimacy: Contradictions of Turkey's democratic experience. 9. E. Ozdalga, Civil society and its enemies: Reflections on a debate in the light of recent developments within the Islamic student movement in Turkey. 10. E. Ozbudun, Civil society and democratic consolidation in Turkey. 11. A. Lundgren, The European Union as a democracy-promoter. 12. I. Brandell, Labour, civil society and democratization in North Africa. 13. O. Tornquist, Civil society and divisive politicisation: experiences from popular efforts at democratisation in Indonesia. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 196 pages. investigates the intersection between post-colonial and feminist criticism, via the Western fascination with veiled women of the Orient. Her original and compelling argument calls into question dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East masculinist assumptions of Orientalism, and Western feminist discourses that seek to 'liberate' the veiled woman. Clean copy.

Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 2nd pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages. For members of Cairo's upper classes, cosmopolitanism is a form of social capital, deployed whenever they acquire or consume transnational commodities, or goods that are linked in the popular imagination to other, more "modern" places. In a series of thickly described and carefully contextualized case studies-of Arabic children's magazines, Pokemon, private schools and popular films, coffee shops and fast-food restaurants-Mark Allen Peterson describes the social practices that create class identities. He traces these processes from childhood into adulthood, examining how taste and style intersect with a changing educational system and economic liberalization. Peterson reveals how uneasy many cosmopolitan Cairenes are with their new global identities, and describes their efforts to root themselves in the local through religious, nationalist, or linguistic practices. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1st, 1895, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two volumes complete. 811 pages, many b&w illustrations. Green cloth with black rule, gilt design and lettering, top edge gilt. Volume one with fraying to cloth at top of spine, previous owner's sticker inside front covers. Otherwise clean, very good set.

Softcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 2nd pr., 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 496 pages. During the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines-nationalist, Marxist, and religious-and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of post-independence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Sidgwick & Jackson , reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 192 pages, b&w illustrations. An abridged version of the two volume, 1892 book of Curzon's travels on the following route: Ashkabad, Kuchan, Kelat-I-Nadiri, Meshed, Teheran, The Northern Provinces, Teheran, Ishfahan, Shiraz to Bushire. Clean copy, minor corner wear.

Softcover. London, Phoenix Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 500 pages. The youngest member ever of the esteemed Academie Francaise--and winner of the Legion of Honor--produces a towering, erudite study of the humble men and women who were Christ's very first followers. Historically rich, it captures everything from the occupations, families, and homes to the flowers and birds native to the land. ".wealth of information.about customs, language, habits, clothes, food and all the other features.will make the reading of the New Testament far more real and vivid."--The Times. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1st, 1873, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 699 pages. Hardcover. Beautifully rebound first edition. Blue cloth covers with title in gilt on black leather spine label. Features black & white illustrations and full color tipped-in plates. Clean, tight. A very nice copy.

Softcover. London, IB Tauris, 1st pbk, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 314 pages, color and b&w illustrations. In this first biography of Alexander Griboyedov in English, Laurence Kelly paints a vivid picture of a man of remarkable literary talent and diplomatic gifts that were nevertheless overshadowed by ill-fortune. Involved in the 1825 Decembrist plot to overthrow the Tsarist state and the mission to further Russia's expansionist agenda in the Caucasus, the famous writer was eventually murdered by zealous mobs in Tehran. This book makes an invaluable contribution to the diplomatic history of Russia, the Caucasus and Iran at the same time illuminating the life and works of a writer who was among nineteenth-century Russia's most respected and prominent writers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 96 pages, color photographs, Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap. Doors of the Kingdom is a unique collection of photographs depicting the ancient and disappearing craft of doormaking in Arabia. The Islamic concept of hurma, or sanctity of a place of dwelling or worship, is recurrent throughout Arabic poetry and literature. The door (bab), preserver of sanctity, becomes symbolic of the boundary between public and private space, and between the profane and the sacred. In 1995, Haajar Gouverneur traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula photographing each region's distinctive doorways and the remaining artisans who make them. The doors of Arabia, painstakingly hand-carved from the wood of the Al-Athel trees, last in their exquisite variety for hundreds of years. This ancient craft, passed down from generation to generation in the central and northern regions of Saudi Arabia, is now nearly extinct. Modern materials, technology, and changing priorities threaten the continuity of the sacred and artisanal tradition of doormaking.

Hardcover. Saudi Arabia, Information Window Agency, 1st, 1995, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 155 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Bilingual English-Arabic. "Reviews the huge positive development that has taken place in more than half a century. Shows the old simple ways of living, desert life, pasturing, pearl diving, irrigation and farming, sea trade through simple traditional ports - then moves to the period following the discovery of oil and the developments which followed the proper use of such natural resources making this Province a high-tech employment area and a place that the world looks up to." Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. London/NY, Routledge , 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages, illustrated in b&w. Empire Building is a study of how and why Western architecture was exported to the Middle East and how Islamic and Byzantine architectural ideas and styles impacted on the West.The book explores how far racial theory and political and religious agendas guided British architects (and how such ideas were resisted when applied), and how Eastern ideas came to influence the West, through writers such as Ruskin and buildings such as the Crystal Palace.Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Empire Building takes the reader on an extraordinary postcolonial journey, backwards and forwards, into the heart and to the edge of empire.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spine, 297 pages. Focusing on the family and career of the prominent Egyptian politician Sayed Bey Marei, Robert Springborg provides in this volume a political ethnography on the changing roles of the family and other social units in Egypt's political economy. He traces the rise to power of the rural nobility from the late nineteenth century, demonstrating how members of this class used family, regional, patron-client, and small-group loyalties to maintain and enhance their powers and privileges under the regimes of Nasser and Sadat. In this context the author also investigates the complexities between provincial and national politics, and between the bureaucratic/technocratic elite and the political elite of the country. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Reading, Garnet, 1st UK, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 118 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs by Freya Stark. 1/2" deep closed tear at top right corner of first 4 pages - appears to be publishers error. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Geo. H. Ellis, 1st, 1895, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with bright gilt lettering, all edges gilt, 209 pages, b&w illustrations. Previous owner's stamp on front endpapers. Bright original 1895 edition.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Insignia Publishing Company, 2nd pr., 1998, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. The first book about Gulf War Syndrome. An intensely personal account of the struggle of two dedicated public servants to expose one of the largest government cover-ups of modern history. A former CIA analyst exposes the officially sanctioned deceptions that have made Gulf War veterans the walking wounded of Desert Storm. NOTE: The first blank page has been torn out but does not affect the rest of the book, in clean condition.

Softcover. NY, Thomas Dunne Books, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 460 pages. Draws from classified documents, confidential sources, and closed-door interviews with Mossad agents, informants, and spymasters to reveal the organization's deepest secrets. Clean copy.