MidEast

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages. Clean, like new.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 228 pages. How can we make sense of Algeria's post-colonial experience - the tragedy of unfulfilled expectations, the descent into violence, the resurgence of the state? Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics explains why Algeria's domestic political economy unraveled from the mid-1980s, and how the regime eventually managed to regain power and hegemony. Miriam Lowi argues the importance of leadership decisions for political outcomes, and extends the argument to explain the variation in stability in oil-exporting states following economic shocks. Comparing Algeria with Iran, Iraq, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, she asks why some states break down and undergo regime change, while others remain stable, or manage to re-stabilize after a period of instability. In contrast with exclusively structuralist accounts of the rentier state, this book demonstrates, in a fascinating and accessible study, that political stability is a function of the way in which structure and agency combine.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. In 1483 Friar Felix Fabri, a Dominican brother from Ulm, Germany, left his priory on two occasions to visit the Holy Land. this account chronicles the homeward journey of the Friar's second trip. Miss Prescott draws from a detailed daily log the Friar kept and supplements his description of the pilgrimage with her own vivid and colorful observations. B&w illustrations, index. Small name on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Paris, Flammarion, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 202 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Pays homage to the ultimate travel dream of that era. This collection of over 100 autochrome, sepia, and black and white photographs captures delicate, lost details: the dusty, labyrinthine walls of the casbah; the dappled sunlight on the market stall of a souk; the intricate metal work of traditional jewelry. Each image is accompanied by an informative text that situates the photograph in its historical reality.

Hardcover. London, Hurst and Co., 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 169 pages. In mid-2012 the previously almost forgotten Syrian Kurds suddenly emerged as a potential game-changer in the country's civil war when in an attempt to consolidate its increasingly desperate position the Assad government abruptly withdrew its troops from the major Kurdish areas in Syria. The Kurds in Syria had suddenly won autonomy, a situation that has huge implications for neighboring Turkey and the near independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Indeed, their precipitous rise may prove a tipping-point that alters the boundaries imposed on the Middle East by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. These important events and what they portend for the future are scrutinized by the renowned scholar of the Kurds Michael Gunter. He also analyses the sudden rise of Salih Muslim and his Democratic Union Party (PYD) - which was created by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and remains affiliated to it - and the extremely complex and deadly fighting between factions of the Syrian Opposition affiliated with al-Qaeda such as the Jabhat al-Nusra jihadists and the PYD, among others. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, England, Karl Baedeker, 2nd Edition, REvised and Augmented, 1894, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 444 pages. Hardcover (flexible cloth). "With 17 Maps, 44 Plans, and a Panorama of Jerusalem". B/w and color illustrated maps, some fold out. Red fabric cover boards with gilt title on spine (faded) and front cover board. Banded design blind stamped on boards and spine. Fabric ribbon bookmark attached at top of spine. Age wear to covers (see images). Former library book with expected labels, marks, stamps and other identifying characteristics (see images). Decorated marbled edges. Front cover has bump to top right corner (see image). Charming, old, pocket-sized travel book that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about turn-of-the-century Palestine and Syria.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth boards and spine with bright gilt lettering on spine. Maps as endpapers. 333 pages, b&w illustrations. This book covers the first contacts between the United States and the Middle East from the earliest times (1800s) to the mid-nineteenth century. The author describes exotic people and places in the Middle East and how American interests there were far from marginal although centered around the American Protestant missionary activity during that period. Clean copy.

hardcover. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 314 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED ON FRONT FLY LEAF BY JOOST (AUTHOR) Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. In March 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, thousands were killed in a chemical attack on a town in Iraqi Kurdistan. Both sides accused the other. Gradually it emerged that Saddam Hussein, with the tacit support of his western allies, was responsible. This book tells the story of the gassing of Halabja, and how Iraq amassed chemical weapons to target Iranian soldiers and Kurdish villagers as America looked the other way. Today, as the Middle East sinks further into turmoil, these policies are coming back to haunt the West.

Softcover. Costa Mesa CA, Mazda Publishers, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 134 pages. The history of Iran is a subject attracting increasing interest, and in it the history of the Qajar period, here dated 1796-1925, occupies a pivotal transitional place. The Qajar rulers reunited Iran after a century of weakness and division, and helped create modern Iran and its response to western power. Although the Qajars were not great reformers, their period saw the development of many new trends of thought, ranging from new religious ideas and groups to the adapting of modern ideas to Iranian circumstances. This book covers intellectual trends and equally it covers the political and socioeconomic history of Iran, including the growth of western incursions and control, which led to social, economic, and political disruptions and helped lead to a major revolution that gave Iran a modern constitution. Later developments culminated in a modernizing central government under the Pahlavi shahs. The period 1796-1925 saw a flowering of Iran's visual arts, politically oriented literature, popular culture, and crafts and carpets, and the beginnings of photography and film. The book interprets all these developments as part of a readable and comprehensible history of a period that helped bring Iran into the modern world while continuing its cultural greatness. Clean copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 273 pages. From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an "empire of critique" from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia. With this book, Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 390 pages, b&w illustrations. From the stony desolation of Jordan's desert, it is but a step through a doorway into the bath house of the Qusayr 'Amra hunting lodge. Inside, multicolored frescoes depict scenes from courtly life and the hunt, along with musicians, dancing girls, and naked bathing women. The traveler is transported to the luxurious and erotic world of a mid-eighth-century Muslim Arab prince. For scholars, though, Qusayr 'Amra, probably painted in the 730s or 740s, has proved a mirage, its concreteness dissolved by doubts about date, patron, and meaning. This is the first book-length contextualization of the mysterious monument through a compelling analysis of its iconography and of the literary sources for the Umayyad period. It illuminates not only the way of life of the early Muslim elite but also the long afterglow of late antique Syria. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 184 pages, coloe illustrations. From before the days of Moses up through the 1960s, slavery was a fact of life in the Middle East. Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims bought and sold at the slave markets for millennia, trading the human plunder of wars and slave raids that reached from the Russian steppes to the African jungles. But if the Middle East was one of the last regions to renounce slavery, how do we account for its--and especially Islam's--image of racial harmony? How did these long years of slavery affect racial relations? In Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis explores these questions and others, examining the history of slavery in law, social thought, and practice over the last two millennia. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 370 pages. Focuses on the religious beliefs and political actions of Muslim elites and their followers in Algeria and Tunisia. In this study the author provides a detailed analysis of resistance and accommodation to colonial rule. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. The Siamanto Press, Reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 438 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Purple endpapers. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent. Black cover boards, white title on spine. Very good condition, just one small spot on bottom edge. Pages clean, binding tight, spine straight.

Softcover. Santa Monica CA, RAND Corporation, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 382 pages, color and b&w illustrations. For years the government of Yemen has conducted military operations north of the capital against groups of its citizens known as "Huthis." In spite of using all means at its disposal, the government has been unable to subdue the Huthi movement. This book presents an in-depth look at the conflict in all its aspects. The authors detail the various stages of the conflict and map out its possible future trajectories. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, George H. Doran Company, 1st US, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 335 pages including index. First Printing stated, with the letter B at the bottom of the copyright page. Brown cloth, lacking the dust jacket. B&w illustrations, foldout map in fine condition in rear. Lawrence's firsthand account of the Arab Revolt during WWI, detailing guerrilla warfare campaigns from sabotaging the Hejaz Railway to the push toward Damascus. This book, originally written in 1919, was printed for the author and his friends, not for general publication. Lawrence abridged the original work and the present volume is about one-half the size of the original. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, George G. Harrap, reprint, ND, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-Paginated. Illustrated with 16 tipped-in full color plates by Willy Pogany. Brown leather covers with gilt decoration on front cover with green and gray/blue flower motif at center. Title in gilt on spine. Front cover spine cracked and separated majority of its length, but cover still holding with interior hinge paper. Edges and corners of covers rubbed. Interior clean and unmarked.

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Cloth 3/4 spine cover with gilt lettering, with silver foil decoration and illustration on front. Remainder mark on bottom page block, Clean, otherwise unmarked copy with only minor wear to corners.

Hardcover. NY, Clarion, 1st, 1992, hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color paintings by Ted Lewin. A ten-year-old Lebanese boy balances his life in a war-torn city. Lewin's watercolor illustrations capture contemporary Beirut with stunning clarity and drama.

Softcover. Beirut, Plan Bey, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 24 pages. Color plates. Limited to 300 copies. Lebanese artist, critic and poet Samir Sayegh is a pioneer of modernism in the Arab world. Often uniting ornamentation with calligraphic script, he has developed a distinctive practice. This catalog is printed in offset in three Pantone colors on special Fabriano Ingres laid finished drawing paper with Japanese hand binding. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY/Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 64 pages illustrated in color and b&w. An unrivaled illustrated reference source on fighting men and commanders of the period. The Sassanians ruled the last great imperial Empire of Persia before the Arab conquests of the 7th century. Rome's only equal in the classical world, the Sassanian Empire had an enormous impact on the development of architecture, mythology, arts, music, military tactics and technology. Within the Sassanian military, the cavalry was the most influential element, and Sassanian cavalry tactics were adopted by the Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Broadway Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Minor foxing to top edge of text block. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 345 pages. As political change sweeps the streets and squares, the parliaments and presidential palaces of the Arab world, Shereen El Feki has been looking at an upheaval a little closer to home--in the sexual lives of men and women in Egypt and across the region. The result is an informative, insightful, and engaging account of a highly sensitive and still largely secret aspect of Arab society. Sex is entwined in religion, tradition, politics, economics, and culture, so it is the perfect lens through which to examine the complex social landscape of the Arab world. From pregnant virgins to desperate housewives, from fearless activists to religious firebrands, from sex work to same-sex relations, Sex and the Citadel takes a fresh look at the sexual history of the region and brings new voices to the debate over its future. Clean copy.