Middle East War

In a remote enemy-held valley in Afghanistan, a Special Forces team planned to scale a steep mountain to surprise and capture a terrorist leader. But before they found the target, the target found them. The team was caught in a deadly ambush that threatened not only their lives but the entire mission. The elite soldiers fought huddled for hours on a small rock ledge as rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-gun fire rained down on them.

Retired army colonel and New York Times bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich provides a searing reassessment of U.S. military policy in the Middle East over the past four decades. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the...

The Ottoman Empire's collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so-called Sick Man of Europe succumbed to its ailments—incompetent management, nationalism, and ethnic and religious conflict. In The War That Made the Middle East, Mustafa Aksakal overturns this conventional narrative.

For millenia The Middle East has been plagued by war. This millenium has been no different, with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Devastation has been wreaked on ordinary,innocent people. Children have been indiscriminately killed, Young men have had their lives terminated before they have had the chance to live their lives to the full. War orphans abound. Widows and Widowers weep at their spouses' graves. Grand Parents have lost generations of their families. Whole communities have been destroyed and villages razed to the ground. I have lived in The Middle East for twenty five years now and ...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY New York Times Christian Science Monitor NPR Seattle Times St. Louis Dispatch National Book Critics Circle Finalist -- American Library Association Notable Book A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and...

In this masterly work of synthesis, Peter Mansfield, drawing on his experience as a journalist and a historian, explores two centuries of history in the Middle East. He forms a picture of the historical, political, and social history of the meeting point of Occident and Orient, from Bonaparte's marauding invasion of Egypt to the start of the Gulf War. For more than four thousand years, the Middle East has provided a setting for titanic struggles between great civilizations and religions.

Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region's Christian minorities, who had previously accounted for 20 percent of the population. By 1924 the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had been reduced to two percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. This is the first account to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia's Christian population.

A Concise History of the Middle East provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of this region. Spanning from the pre-Islamic era to the present, it explores the evolution of Middle Eastern institutions and culture, the influence of European colonialism and Western imperialism, regional modernization efforts, the struggle of various peoples for political independence, the Arab–Israel conflict, the reassertion of Islamist values and power, the issues surrounding the Palestinian Question, and more.

Uncover the Lost Kingdom That Nearly Conquered the Ancient World Deep in the mountains of western Turkey lie the ruins of a civilization that time forgot—until now. In Ghosts of Arzawa, archaeologist R. Jay Driskill resurrects one of the Bronze Age's most fascinating and overlooked kingdoms, revealing a sophisticated empire that dared to challenge the mighty Hittites and corresponded as equals with the pharaohs of Egypt. The Kingdom History Almost Lost For over 3,000 years, Arzawa remained buried beneath layers of history, known only through fragmentary mentions in enemy archives. But ...

The war that ended an empire. The decisions that created a century of conflict. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire had ruled the Middle East for six centuries. By 1923, it had been erased from the map—carved up by victorious powers in Paris and London who drew borders that would spark conflicts for the next hundred years. Last Sultan's War tells the epic story of World War I's forgotten front: from the disastrous Allied invasion at Gallipoli to Lawrence of Arabia's desert revolt, from secret treaties that promised the same land to different peoples, to the final collapse of the last great ...

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Usama Bin Laden’s greatest fear was not capture or death, but the exposure of al-Qaeda’s secrets. At great risk to themselves and the entire mission, the US Special Operations Forces, who carried out the Abbottabad raid that killed Bin Laden, took an additional eighteen minutes to collect Bin Laden’s hard drives and thereby expose al-Qaeda’s secrets. In this ground-breaking book, Nelly Lahoud dives into Bin Laden’s files and meticulously distills the nearly six thousand pages of Arabic private communications.

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days.

From seven-time award-winning author James Bultema, Red Lines is the third explosive installment in the Sea of Red series, plunging readers into the heart of a modern military war between the United States and Iran. After a devastating attack on a symbol of American freedom by radicalized domestic Hezbollah terrorists, the US finds itself on the brink of war. Tensions escalate as retaliatory strikes lead to a high-stakes confrontation that reverberates across the globe. In a game of cat and mouse, submarines prowl the depths, fighter jets streak across the skies, and warships clash in an ...

While Israel Slept tells the gripping inside story of how Hamas, Israel’s weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a surprise attack on one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to October 7, 2023, the book exposes the intelligence and strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion.

It was the deadliest terror campaign ever mounted against a nation in modern times: the al-Aqsa, or Second, Intifada. This is the untold story of how Israel fought back with an elite force of undercover operatives drawn from the nation's diverse backgrounds and ethnicities - and united in their ability to walk among the enemy as no one else dared.

In The Truth about Muhammad, New York Times best-selling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer offers an honest and telling portrait of the founder of Islam - perhaps the first such portrait in half a century - unbounded by fear and political correctness, unflinching, and willing to face the hard facts about Muhammad's life that continue to affect our world today.

The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing Iraq is in the hands of 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. They pursue irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity, angering the locals and fueling the insurgency.

.What if Saddam Hussein… …hadn’t stopped with Kuwait? Project 19 might have worked. No one knows how close Iraq came to invading Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They wanted their money, and Saddam wanted revenge. In a world where the USSR ran a lend-lease program with the Iraqis, Saddam felt emboldened. He’d convince the world that he was just bringing their 19th province back into the fold. With an oil war going on, the Soviets threw their hats into the ring behind Iraq. If they’d had all the latest in equipment, the 100 hours war wouldn’t be so easily fought. It ...

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents...