“Evocative and beautifully written, House of Stone . . . should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the agonies and hopes of the Middle East.” — Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate
“In rebuilding his family home in southern Lebanon, Shadid commits an extraordinarily generous act of restoration for his wounded land, and for us all.” — Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey
In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut—where he lives— or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled and where he was raised. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather’s estate, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild.
House of Stone is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent’s jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. In this poignant and resonant memoir, the author of the award-winning Night Draws Near creates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house’s renewal alongside his family’s flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. In the process, Shadid memorializes a lost world, documents the shifting Middle East, and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape. House of Stone is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth, and the universal yearning for home.
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A Californian paramedic answers an advertisement for contract work at a military hospital in Saudi Arabia. So his adventure begins. This is a riveting, factual account of his ten years inside a country seldom seen by the outside world. Working on the private medical staff of King Abdullah, no western writer has ever been this close to the "House of Saud". The author takes you on a journey from the desert camps of the Bedouin to the highest echelons of the Saudi royal family. From meetings between King Abdullah and Yasser Arafat to the death of Edi Amin the author documents it all. Themes explored include the contrast of cultures and the rise of terrorism in a post 9/11 world. The author's unique and often humorous perspective provides a view of Saudi society that has never before been documented by any other book in this genre. The author gives an important insight to events that continue to affect the world today.
Price: $15.99
A young man takes on the task of teaching at one university then another. As he gets involved in the lives around him, he can't help but become of theirs. The secrets, the lies, the girlfriends, the suicide attempt, the good times, the bad arrest, the worst the Motherland had to offer. And among that the author is able to grow an amazing story that makes a man a Russian out of the world he sees.
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Full-color guide
• Make your trip to Israel unforgettable with illustrated features, 64 maps, and 265 color photos.
Customize your trip with simple planning tools
• Top experiences and attractions
• Helpful regional overviews
• Easy-to-read color maps
Explore Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Galilee, and beyond
• Discerning Fodor’s Choice picks for hotels, restaurants, sights, and more
• “Word of Mouth” tips from fellow Fodor’s travelers
• Illustrated features on the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv's nightlife, and Jerusalem's holiest places • Best desert adventures, beaches, and historic and religious sites
• Excursions to Bethlehem and Petra
Opinions from destination experts
• Fodor’s Israel-based writers reveal their favorite local haunts
• Frequently updated to provide the latest information
Price: $12.60
Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.
With dizzying speed she finds herself attending Yasser Arafat's funeral, sharing a holiday dinner with a suicide bomber's family, tour-guiding Israeli friends around the West Bank, dating a Palestinian from a conservative Muslim village, being held at gunpoint and injured by a stun grenade, and witnessing the 2005 Disengagement from inside the Gaza Strip.
The gripping narrative focuses not only on violence, terror, and social and political upheavals but also on the daily rounds of house parties, concerts, barbecues, weddings, jokes, harvests, and romantic drama that happen in between. Its seamless blend of travelogue, memoir, and narrative journalism ramps the average American up to a sophisticated, multi-faceted understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Funny, gorgeous, shocking, and galvanizing, Fast Times in Palestine challenges the way we think not only about the Middle East but albout human nature and our place in the world.
REVIEWS
"A moving, inspiring account of life in Palestine that's enormously informative yet reads like a novel!"
-- Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace
"It's love in the time of occupation as Pamela Olson... takes us on the emotional roller-coaster of her very personal experience of life in Ramallah... A charming book brimming with tension and tragedy, but also with the humor, warmth, everyday foibles and irrepressible hopes of a people determined to live free."
-- Tony Karon, Senior Editor, TIME Magazine
"Part adventure story, part searing reportage, part love story, and wholly absorbing."
-- Dr. Kenneth Ring, co-author, Letters from Palestine
"Pamela Olson leads the reader on an exciting, funny, at times heart-wrenching journey, carefully deciphering complex political and historical issues. Olson is a talented writer, intelligent and exceptional in her ability to convey both tragedy and hope, remaining morally grounded and refreshingly honest."
-- Ramzy Baroud, Author, My Father was a Freedom Fighter
"As an Israeli whose life was shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I found Fast Times in Palestine moving and refreshing. Pamela Olson comes to the Middle East with a blank slate and is therefore able to hold up an undistorted mirror to the reality she encounters."
-- Miko Peled, Author, The General's Son
For more information, visit pamolson.org
Price: $12.00
Travel Egypt and experience the best it has to offer. From the hustle and bustle of Cairo and the wondrous ancient pyramids of Giza, across the White Desert to the stunning Red Sea, this Egypt travel guide includes:
*Top 10 best places to visit in Egypt
*Kid friendly holiday ideas
*Guided tours
*Top 10 best rated hotels for a luxurious Egyptian experience
*Top 10 best budget stays for the thrifty traveller
*Best buys while you're there
*Transport
and more...
Written from first hand experience, Egypt Travel ensures your well earned holiday will be an amazing experience to remember and not a nightmare you'd rather forget.
Get the facts about Egypt travel. Get your copy now.
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First published in 1931. None of the manuscripts which have come down to us represent the original form of Marco Polo's narrative, but it is clear that certain texts are closer to the lost original than others. Entrusted with the task of preparing a new Italian edition of Marco Polo, Benedetto discovered many unknown manuscripts. He carefully edited the most famous of the manuscripts (the Geographic text) and collated it with the other best known ones.
· An invaluable index has been added to Aldo Ricci's of Benedetto's text, which includes all the identifications made in the Geographic text and also later editions by Marsden (1818), Pauthier (1865) and Yule (1871).
· The difficulty of following Polo on his many journeys has also been simplified by the process of distinguishing between those places on his main route to China and his return journey by sea to Persia and those places which he visited during his stay in China and those he never visited at all.
Price: $200.00
Hitch a ride through time on the Danger Boy adventures! These rich, action-filled fantasies about a reluctant time-traveler and his unusual sidekicks will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
The year is 2019, and a secret government agency is forcing Eli’s dad to continue with his time-travel experiments, even though Eli’s mom has just disappeared in one. Now Eli has a ridiculous new code name — and a gravely important mission.
In DANGER BOY: ANCIENT FIRE, a lab accident sends Eli sprawling through the Fifth Dimension, where he hooks up with the amiable Clyne, an evolved dinosaur from an alternate Earth who just wants to finish his homework. Clyne’s timeship lands them in ancient Alexandria, Egypt, just as a great fire rages through the city and the girl scientist Thea is fleeing an angry mob who thinks she’s a witch. As if that’s not enough, in the present-day world, a deadly pox is on the loose, and bizarre things are starting to happen to the fabric of time itself.
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Invaluable information from local experts,detailed maps and color photos will help you discover the best of everything from restaurants and hotles to shopping and cultural activities and much more.
Price: $11.24
In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following.
Through these encounters-by turns touching, con-founding, surprising, and funny-Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.
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