Middle East Books

House Of Tears: Westerners' Adventures In Islamic Lands gathers and presents narratives about the Islamic world from the last several decades - but it's more than a travel or true adventure collection, even though elements of these two genres are present. House Of Tears is, above all, a survey of cultural encounters which collects and presents the stories of Westerns who traveled to Islamic nations during the 18th to 20th centuries. From an encounter with a homicidal sultan to harsh journeys over 'blasted land', House Of Tears is literary, vivid, and provides powerful social and cultural insights draped in the guise of adventure.

This is a very absorbing read full of adventure and history in parts of the Islamic world I basically knew nothing about before reading this. My main complaint is that the author who gathered different real stories from explorers books did not write more of the book himself. His writing was riveting and did great set ups for the chapters which are taken from original accounts by Westerners Americans and Europeans who opened the Muslim regions. It was interesting to read the writings of those who went into the Muslim countries over the last 200 years and see how many of their names were famaliliat, like Lawrence but others, even more exciting I never heard of.

"If You Could Be My Friend" is a great book to everyone. It can break the highest score by its cover and content. My teacher and I were looking through books at the library, and we came to this book by accident. I really can't tell my feelings while I was reading it. It talks about two girls, one an Israeli and the other a Palestinian. They knew each other through a french journalist.Then they started to send letters to each others from August 1988 talking about the history of their two peoples. Their letters were emotional because both of them were writing of what was happening in their lands because of the war. First, they thought that they could be friends, but after many years, they grew up and changed their minds. Many people were killed from both sides and each one of them started to blame the other. On October 1991, they met in Jerusalem for the first time. I really recommend this book to anyone because the author did a fantastic job writing it. I finished reading it in one day only because I was really interested in it and I didn't feel the time.

I came across this book by accident. It almost brings tears to my eyes just thinking about what I experienced in the pages of this book. This educational treasure cuts through the clutter of daily news and brings you to the personal and political front lines of two girls seperated by war. Somewhere in each letter is the innocence of youth, however at all times there is a learned vehemance budding in every letter. Despite the political barriers between both girls, there is the common denominator of friendship. When they look at each other as Arab and Jewish...they tend to think "She's one of the enemy." However, when they look at each other as Mervet and Galit they tend to think "She is my friend." To me this book is proof that people can learn to celebrate divirsity if they would only stop to listen and talk to each other.

Carleton Watkins is an overlooked figure in the history of American photography--Artistically we could not have wanted for more in someone recording the "wilds" of the West. Beautiful photographs of San Francisco and the Northwest's industrial beginnings, and timeless representation of Yosemite's natural wonder.

Carleton Watkins's fifty-some year career has left him recognition as one the greatest American photographers of the nineteenth century. The photographs shown in The Art of Perception clearly show why. Without saying Watkins was ahead of his time because of the sophisticating and arresting images he produced with a camera, it can be said that few, if any, of his contemporaries could rival his work. In the Art of Perception, the reader will have the privelage to be psychologically compelled by the world from the visual standpoint of this obscure individual. In this book, Watkins's innovation as a photographer shows the developing western world while at the same time creating an unparalleled visual experience for the viewers through more than one-hundred of his best photos, including some never-before seen or reproduced. Essays by Douglas R. Nickel also explain some of the subjects and objects that Watkins researched and photographed.

Travelling through the western United States, Watkins captured some of the most breathtaking pictures of Yosemite, San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada, and more. In my personal opinion, it is almost impossible to dislike any of the pictures collected in The Art of Perception. I must admit, however, that I have a personal taste for landscapes and documentary style photos of young America's development, especially ones as lush in detail as Watkins's are. More than anything, I loved the photographs that Watkins shot showing nature alone, untouched by any progression of America's buildup. As the viewer, it is impossible to prepare for the overwhelming rush from the elevated sensation of visual contingency created by Watkins's vision. Watkins's work not only captured my attention for these simple facts, but also educated me in the importance of the man as a very important historical figure in recording the growth of young American and as an innovator for the way we view photography today.

I must want to appreciate that lady for her courage , for her truthfulnesss. she could have lied like western media.....oh these were really bad, they obused me physically and...., they are crazy, but God gave her a beautiful and bold heart ,GOD Bless you Lady , you are lucky, you saw the light and you are following that light.

This has to be one of the most exciting books i have read. A foreign or a western woman in Afghanistan under Taliban rule who remarkably tells the world in her beautiful words that they are just humans like you and me. Think the Talibhan deserve a chance, and Yvonne Ridley tells how they really are. Gives a true first hand account of what has happened in Afghanistan. Would definitely recommend it to anyone.

This book is one of the best I have read so far. The first half of the book was about Lansdale in Philippine as an advisor to Phillipine's president at the time. I have been researching a lot into the period that the second half of this particular book covered. The author (Lansdale) had been very honest when he wrote this book, a must read for anyone with questions about what happpened in Vietnam in the time period from 1954 to 1960. I finally read something that had something positive about President Ngo Dinh Diem. This book tell the truth about Ngo Dinh Diem from someone who know him best because Lansdale had acted as Diem's political advisor and best friend. The book is a first hand account (sort of like a memoir) of someone who were actually there, and witnessed every ordeal that had happened. A fine book if you wanted to read something truthful. You don't have to believe me, so I will stop now so you can go ahead and read this wonderful book. By the way, have fun reading :) :) Gwynevere

Lansdale's book is one of those forgotten treasures for those studying insurgent warfare strategy. General Lansdale had an enormous fund of experience, contacts, and cultural knowledge of the Phillipines and his memoir about his role in defeating the Huk insurgency in 1950 tells us a lot about all the RIGHT things to do. Small footprint, work with and cultivate local leaders, disingage the population from the insurgents...all of this takes enormous personal communication skill and rapport along with the common sense of a beat cop. If anything, you'll learn that not everyone in the military is cut out for fighting insurgent warfare. After his success in in the Phillipines he was sent to Vietnam while the French were getting ready to pull out in 1954-1955. He details what the French had done wrong and how some of the French officers "got it" but unfortunately didn't have the support of superiors...something important to remember. Landsdale outlines the situation so that you can tell without his saying so, just when the point of no return for the French had been reached. This is not only a great book about insurgent warfare strategy but just a great read as well. No long drawn out tales of "there I was facing 50 insurgents armed with just my pocket knife" just a recitation of real events as he experienced them, including the not so exciting but essential grunt work insurgent warfare calls for. If you can find a copy...get it.

Idris Barwick was married to my dad's cousin. He was a great man...I'm sorry that I was so young when he passed away and I didn't have the opportunity to know him as an adult. I remember him telling his story to my parents, but I was young and didn't really care. I wish now that I had listened. His life and story are amazing...how he lived through all that he did. This book should be required reading! A true story of courage, strength and faith from a wonderful man I called Uncle Id.

This book has been a part of my life since birth and it holds a special place in my heart. My father wrote it during the late 1940s while trying to recover from a nightmare. He hoped that one day it would be published but died in 1975 without seeing that dream come true. I took up the cause and finally that day is here. In the Shadow of Death is a brilliant, shocking and deeply inspiring account of one man's struggle to survive a very dark period in British military history. We are incredibly proud of our Dad and his story. It is one that needs to be told and we hope you have an opportunity to read the book. If you would like more information on the book, including excerpts, please visit www.InTheShadowOfDeath.com.

At times both poignant and prescient, "In the Shadow of Islam" is the revelation of a brilliant mind. The book is, as one would expect from a trade paperback, well printed and bound.

This volume of Isabelle Eberhardt's original Dans L'ombre Chaude de Islam "In the Warm Shadow of Islam" was penned in 1904. As a big Eberhardt fan I still enjoyed reading this slim 1993 edition although it's lamely billed "In the Shadow of Islam". Translated by Sharon Bangert, the omission of this single word from the title, "Warm", quite neatly reverses its meaning. Thus the translator or publishers (Peter Owen Publishers) chose to slyly sabotage Eberhardt's empathic sympathetic message about her chosen faith Sufism/Islam with a beckoning yet ominous tang. I suppose her original title, 'In the Warm Shadow of Islam', (emphasis mine) was too long and Islam-friendly for today's market?

Thus, the publisher's choice perpetrates the ever popular anti-Islamic bent. That said, it's the brilliance of Eberhart's work that manages to shine through even a biased translation.
Without ado, let me provide some of my favorite quotes from In the Shadow of Islam:

"To the extent that I feel myself saturated by ancient, unshaken Islam, which here seems to be the very breathing of the earth...And I understand that one could end one's days in the peace and silence of some southern zawiya, end in ecstasy, free of yearnings, confronting only radiant horizons. " pg 114

"I have jotted these reflections in the margin of a letter...Having written them, I relapse into my feeling of exile, wishing to bury myself even deeper in this hostile south, without any desire for the Paris I have known, where the newspaper's lip-service to feminism was even more repugnant to me than the Parisian coquettes.

I have said nothing in my response worth reading. Why bother? One day paths separate, destinies crystallize. And this is so much more than having made a few friends. When they are good enough to invite us to share their foreign happiness, let's show them what's possible to a true fraternity of minds.

Let's regret nothing, since our happiness and theirs will consist in letting ourselves go one day, into mysterious currents which will carry our souls adrift towards impossible shores. Then we'll enjoy the intoxication of decadence and shipwreck; and wandering over the immense beaches of the night, we'll feel within us the seeds of suffering begin to germinate." pg 70

"...forgetting the principals of tolerance propounded by Islam at its purest..." pg 49

It strikes me that prayer, and dreams, too, should never end." pg 60-61


Please enjoy this timeless piece of writing...still relevant and convincing.

If you read one other Christian Book outside of the bible it needs to be this book. This book is excellent!!!!!It is a mix of standard bible commentary, some bible archeology, and a travel book all mixed up in one. The author also uses some references about the bible stories from ancient texts like Josephus and others. The book has a liberal amount of photo graphs of the bible sites as they are today. Reading this book will give you a feeling of actually visiting the Holy Land. (Actually visiting the site is also a must do thing for anyone) Looking at the faith stories from a modern perspective with a little commentary and history mixed gives you a new look. The truth of the gospel will stand out from reading this book like a sore thumb after you hit it with a hammer. Actually looking at the site as it is today makes you see the event as a real thing and not just literature. This book won't convert anyone but if you are a believer you will love the book.

Peter Walker takes the reader on both a historical and modern day tour of the Holy Land. This work is full of helpful maps and pictures of the land in which Jesus traveled, beginning in Bethlehem with the birth of Jesus and from there to Nazareth. There is a key days chart for each location discussed and the important all of the important events that have happened there throughout history. The focus is obviously on the time of Jesus, but each section has a section about today (e.g. Bethlehem Today). The author also give instructions and tips to anyone who is going to be taking a trip to Israel. Other locations that are included at the Jordan River, The Judean Desert, Galilee and its villages, Samaria, Caesarea Philippi, Jericho, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, the Temple, Jerusalem, Golgotha, and Emmaus. If you have read N. T. Wright's book "The Way of the Lord" and enjoyed it, then you will like this book as well. Walker seems to have been inspired, at least somewhat by Wright's work.

H.V. Morton joined the list of my favorite authors after just one reading of his "In Search of London." "In the Steps of the Master," Morton's 1934 record of "the thoughts and the experiences which come the way of a man as he travels through Palestine with the New Testament in his hands," has cemented his place on that list. "In the Steps..." is a wonderful piece of travel literature, and certainly repays reading, even given all that has changed in the nearly three-quarters of a century since it was first published.

I was fortunate to be able to make my first-ever trip to Israel last month, and so made a point to find and read "In the Steps..." before I left. I'm tempted to say now that things in the Holy Land may have changed more in the 73 years since this book was published than they had in the nearly two millennia since the time of Christ. Twenty-first century Jerusalem, in particular, is a very different place from the dusty settlement Morton describes. No one, I think would mistake "In the Steps..." as a particularly relevant guidebook today. And yet...

There are elements of the Holy Land that maybe never change, and most of the holy sites Morton visits -- certainly the more significant ones -- are still accessible to the modern pilgrim or curious tourist, and the shape of the land and the setting of Jerusalem or the Sea of Galilee remain as Morton describes them.

That, I think, is the real value of this book. Morton is an excellent travel writer, and anyone who appreciates well-crafted descriptive prose is in for a treat with (I'd venture, based on the two volumes of his I've read so far) most anything he's done. As I noted in my review of "In Search of London," Morton seems equally at home describing both the modern condition and the history of a place. Add to that, in this case, his facility with Scripture and his skill in pulling relevant details out of the Biblical narrative, and this becomes a great way to prepare for a trip and/or to assess what you've seen.

The several modern guidebooks about Jerusalem and Israel I read were good for details. But "In the Steps of the Master" was second only to the Bible itself in helping me prepare for the sense -- the spiritual impact -- of being in the land where Jesus walked.

This is the only one of H. V. Morton's books I've read, although I own one or two others. I suppose I must be slow on the uptake or too busy reading other things, not to have read further. This book was five stars all the way. I've still got the taste of the dust in my mouth.

Being something of a neophyte in matters pertaining to modern day Israel or ancient Palestine, or vice versa, I was thrilled to find myself in the hands of a gifted travel writer on this first armchair journey to the Holy Land. Morton knows how to, how shall I say it, maintain a religious sense in his work without allowing the reader to detect just how religious (or irreligious) he is. It's quite clever. Anyway, there is much biblical reference, almost always referring to the geography through which we pass, or the local architecture. For instance, his description of the Temple fascinated me. I must say it gave me a hankering to go to that part of the world, which is partly what a good travel book ought to do, methinks. Otherwise, I just enjoyed the writing. Very rhythmic, fluid text which is easy to read and tends to sweep one along, almost inexorably. I really shall have to dig out my other Mortons (on the British Isles) and have a go at them. Great read if you can find it, which shouldn't be too hard: he was a very popular and widely published author in his day.

This is a fine book about the Arab-Israeli conflict, written by a Holocaust survivor. In my opinion, it could be a little better organized, but I think it is certainly worth reading.

Sabina Citron makes plenty of good points in the book. Here are nine of them:

1) Sedition is a serious crime, freedom of expression not withstanding.

2) Citizens of nations, including Arab citizens of Israel, need to abide by the laws of their lands, and demonstrate allegiance to those lands.

3) It is a lie that the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria are a separate indigenous people, and the media have been irresponsible in promulgating this lie.

4) The ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel's security fence was perfidious and preposterous.

5) At the UN, the only six states to vote against this preposterous ICJ ruling were Israel, the United States, Australia, Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands.

6) The present anti-Israeli hate propaganda which demonizes and dehumanizes Jews is about the same as National Socialist propaganda with the exception that the Arabs include the claim that the Jews stole their land.

7) In European, Canadian, and American universities, campus propaganda often espouses the Arab "cause" to the exclusion of all others, with academic freedom and freedom of speech becoming a mockery.

8) Tiny Israel is not too big but too small. Since Arabs living in Israel are more free than those in any other country in the Middle East, we should be exploring ways to expand the Jewish state, especially if freedom and justice for Arabs is our goal.

9) The British Association of University Teachers Union came up with an anti-Israeli boycott. Does that mean the professors who came up with this boycott are against peace? No, they have gone beyond that to be active propagandists against Israel.

I highly recommend this book.

In this far reaching commentary the reader is presented with a vast array of problems in history concentrating around Jewish and Israeli topics. There are at least four themes included in these short illustrations and insights. Firstly the true nature of the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism. This is brought to light in such essays on the Church's responsibility and apology to Jews. Furthermore the origins of anti-Semitism and its present form, especially in the Arab world, are explained. New episodes in history are shown to be precursors of anti-Semitism, such as the council of Nicea.
The second theme is that of Israel and threats to it caused by a Palestinian state or terrorism in general. The PLO is referred to as a Trojan horse, entering the peace needing gates of Israel so that it can incubate a new terrorist apparatus.
The third theme is that of radical Islamism and the British governments "perfidy" towards Israel. The western leaders are blamed for either covering up knowledge of the Holocaust or not allowing in enough Jewish refugees.
The last theme is the perversion of the UN by extremist hateful elements making it, ironically given its history, as the leading element in anti-Semitic propaganda today. From the famous `Zionism is Racism' resolution down through the UN Human Rights Council that only focuses on Israel out of all the countries in the world as a violator of `human rights' the UN is shown to be rotten to its core.
These are not unique or new topics and they are presented in a scattered manner. Nevertheless the read gives the impression of being deeply heartfelt. A very interesting collection of short essays on wide ranging themes.

Seth J. Frantzman