Best Historical Middle East Biographies

A New York Times Notable Book. A Time Magazine “Best Comix of the Year”. A San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times Best-seller. Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Striking a perfect balance between the fantasies and neighborhood conspiracies of childhood and the mounting lunacy of Khomeini's reign, she's like the Persian love child of Spiegelman and Lynda Barry.” – Salon “A brilliant and unusual graphic memoir. “[A] self-portrait of the artist as a young girl, rendered in graceful black-and-white comics that apply a childlike sensibility to the bleak lowlights of recent Iranian history. [Her] style is powerful; it persuasively communicates confusion and horror through the eyes of a precocious preteen.” – Village Voice " This is an excellent comic book, that deserves a place with Joe Sacco and even Art Spiegelman. In her bold black and white panels, Satrapi eloquently reasserts the moral bankruptcy of all political dogma and religious conformity; how it bullies, how it murders, and how it may always be ridiculed by individual rebellions of the spirit and the intellect." --Zadie Smith, author of The Autograph Man and White Teeth " You've never seen anything like Persepolis— the intimacy of a memoir, the irresistability of a comic book, and the political depth of a the conflict between fundamentalism and democracy. I grew up reading the Mexican comics of Gabriel Vargas, graduated to the political teachings of Rius, fell under the spell of Linda Barry, Art Spiegelman, and now I am a fan of Marjane Satrapi. --Tariq Ali Author of The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity "I found the work immensely moving with depths of nuance and wisdom that one might never expect to find in a comic book. It’s a powerful, mysterious, enchanting story that manages to reflect a great swath of Iranian contemporary history within the sensitive, intimate tale of a young girl’s coming-of-age. Ms. Satrapi's provocative, graphic narrative of life in Iran before and after the Islamic revolution is an extraordinary testament to the level of human suffering experienced by Iranians tossed from one political hypocrisy to another. Persepolis opens a rare door to understanding of events that still haunt America, while shining a bright light on the personal humanity and humor so much alive in Iranian families today." This graphic novel is a reminder of the human spirit that fights oppression and death, it is a witness to something true and lasting which is more affective than hundreds of news broadcasts.

Beginning with Jesus' birth, Ken Bailey leads you on a kaleidoscopic study of Jesus throughout the four Gospels. "A brilliant addition to Bailey's other works in which he sheds light on the biblical text from Middle Eastern culture." He draws upon the works of others, ancient and modern, allowing students of scripture to gain an additional layer of insight from the texts he examines. While one could enjoy reading the book straight through, it has the wealth of information that may also be accessed through use as a resource for examining any of the treated Gospel texts." Laid out in simple format for easy absorption by readers, the author's explanations of his findings require no formal training to follow and understand them. "Bailey has a gift of clear, lively expression; he takes advantage of his personal experiences, interest in Hebrew poetic structure, and knowledge of Arabic to bring insights into NT interpretation." "A rich and fascinating anthology of exegetical essays reflecting on gospel texts through the lens of Middle Eastern culture and rhetoric. Another valuable contribution of this book is the introduction to, and interaction with, great Eastern commentaries long forgotten or largely unknown to Western Biblical Scholarship.

The definitive biography of the iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Fund-raising in America in 1948, secretly meeting in Amman with King Abdullah right before Israel's declaration of independence, mobbed by thousands of Jews in a Moscow synagogue in 1948 as Israel's first representative to the USSR, serving as minister of labor and foreign minister in the 1950s and 1960s, Golda brought fiery oratory, plainspoken appeals, and shrewd deal-making to the cause to which she had dedicated her life—the welfare and security of the State of Israel and its inhabitants. One finishes Klagsbrun’s monumental volume—which is both a biography of Golda and a biography of Israel in her time—with a deepened sense that modern Israel, its prime ministers, and its survival is a story of biblical proportions.” —Commentary “The most comprehensive, best-researched, and carefully nuanced study of Israel’s fourth prime minister published to date. “A majestic and very important account of the extraordinary life of the American-raised woman who became a charismatic and powerful prime minister of modern Israel. I thought I knew her life story, but Klagsbrun’s compelling story of Golda's triumphs and trials, her irresistible personality, gave me a fresh appreciation of this historic woman.” —Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation “Masterful [and] compelling. Part biblically reminiscent drama, part novel-like interiority, part American-inspired pioneering, Golda Meir’s story, from childhood pogroms to Milwaukee schoolteacher to prime minister of the beleaguered reborn state of Israel, has no parallel in the annals of nations.” —Cynthia Ozick “Golda Meir—immigrant, Zionist, feminist, and wartime prime minister of Israel—claimed far more than one woman’s share of history. In Lioness, Francine Klagsbrun superbly captures Golda’s courage and unrelenting commitment to the founding and survival of a Jewish state.” —John A. Farrell, author of Richard Nixon: The Life “A masterful biography—it’s scholarly and gorgeously researched, but most of all it’s the vivid story of a tough, complicated, remarkable woman who led Israel during a crucial period in its history. “Klagsbrun’s prodigious biography goes far beyond previous hagiographies to place Golda’s personal life against the backdrop of the emergence of Israel on the world stage.

For the sake of her daughters, she has decided to take the risk of speaking out about the life of women in her country, regardless of their rank. Although they share affection, confidences and an easy camaraderie within the confines of the women's quarters, they also share a history of appaling oppressions, everyday occurrences that in any other culture would be seen as shocking human rights violations; thirteen-year-old girls forced to marry men five times their age, young women killed by drowning, stoning, or isolation in the women's room, a padded, windowless cell where women are confined with neither light nor conversation until death claims them.By speaking out, Sultana risks bringing the wrath of the Saudi establishment upon her head and te heads of her children. Jean Sasson is an American writer whose work mainly centers around women in the Middle East and the injustices that they suffer at the hands of a patriarchal society.

Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author (of Persian Pictures , The Desert and the Sown , and many other collections), poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer (she took off her skirt and climbed the Alps in her underclothes). Gertrude Bell , vividly told and impeccably researched by Georgina Howell, is a richly compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and times, and in so doing, created a remarkable and enduring legacy. In this hefty, thoroughly enjoyable biography of Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), English journalist Howell describes her subject as not only "the most famous British traveler of her day, male or female" but as a "poet, scholar, historian, mountaineer, photographer, archaeologist, gardener, cartographer, linguist and distinguished servant of the state." Having clearly fallen in love with her subject (though not blind to her warts), Howell leaves no stone unturned—family history, school days, Bell's clothes, sometimes her meals, her friendships, her servants, her thousands of miles traveled, her fluency in languages (Persian, Turkish, Arabic) and, yes, her romances. Discovering her spiritual home in the Middle East, Bell transformed herself into a cartographer, archaeologist, writer, and photographer as she undertook perilous journeys to fabled desert outposts, commanding the respect of powerful Bedouin sheikhs. Howell writes with all the verve, historical veracity, and acumen her intoxicating subject demands--her spectacular biography leaves the reader lost in admiration and steeped in sorrow.

The uplifting and unforgettable true story of a US Marine, the stray dog he met on an Afghan battlefield, and how they saved each other and now travel America together, "spreading the message of stubborn positivity." A poignant and inspiring tale of hope, resilience, and optimism, with a timeless message at its heart—"it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we respond to it"— Craig & Fred is a shining example of the power of love to transform our hearts and our lives. Fred not only stole Craig’s heart; he won over the RECON fighters, who helped Craig smuggle the dog into heavily fort-ified Camp Leatherneck.

Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada , is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Michael B. Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation. [Oren] has woven a seamless narrative out of a staggering variety of diplomatic and military strands.” —The New York Times. “With a remarkably assured style, Oren elucidates nearly every aspect of the conflict. “[In] Michael Oren’s richly detailed and lucid account, the familiar story is thrilling once again. [Oren’s] narrative is precise but written with great literary flair. This is the most complete history to date of the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel entered and began its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While no account can be definitive until Arab archives open, Oren, a Princeton-trained senior fellow at Jerusalem's Shalem Center who has served as director of Israel's department of inter-religious affairs and as an adviser to Israel's U.N. delegation, utilizes newly available archival sources and a spectrum of interviews with participants, including many Arabs, to fill gaps and correct misconceptions. Further, Six Days of War is an attack on "post-Zionism": the school of politics and history that casts Israel as the author of policies that intentionally promote the destuction of Palestine as a separate entity and of Palestinians as a people, not least through the occupation that began with the 1967 War. About the nature of Israeli policy since the war, the book says little, but finds that "for all its military conquests, Israel was still incapable of imposing the peace it craved." Many books, e.g., Ahron Bregman's Israel's War: 1947-1993, Tibi Bassam's Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967-91, and Eric Hammel's Six Days in June, cover a broader period, rely heavily on analysis, or fall short of objectivity.

Stunning photography pairs with informative and personal text by the wife of the most recent United States ambassador to Qatar to give Westerners traveling to Qatar on business or for World Cup preparations an inside understanding of this moderate Muslim country and the way it attempts to become modern and engaged with the world without losing its heritage. Diana Untermeyer worked in the White House during the George H. W. Bush administration and at the Christ Church Cathedral in Houston before moving to Qatar as the ambassador's wife.

The definitive biography of the iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Fund-raising in America in 1948, secretly meeting in Amman with King Abdullah right before Israel's declaration of independence, mobbed by thousands of Jews in a Moscow synagogue in 1948 as Israel's first representative to the USSR, serving as minister of labor and foreign minister in the 1950s and 1960s, Golda brought fiery oratory, plainspoken appeals, and shrewd deal-making to the cause to which she had dedicated her life—the welfare and security of the State of Israel and its inhabitants. One finishes Klagsbrun’s monumental volume—which is both a biography of Golda and a biography of Israel in her time—with a deepened sense that modern Israel, its prime ministers, and its survival is a story of biblical proportions.” —Commentary “The most comprehensive, best-researched, and carefully nuanced study of Israel’s fourth prime minister published to date. “A majestic and very important account of the extraordinary life of the American-raised woman who became a charismatic and powerful prime minister of modern Israel. I thought I knew her life story, but Klagsbrun’s compelling story of Golda's triumphs and trials, her irresistible personality, gave me a fresh appreciation of this historic woman.” —Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation “Masterful [and] compelling. Part biblically reminiscent drama, part novel-like interiority, part American-inspired pioneering, Golda Meir’s story, from childhood pogroms to Milwaukee schoolteacher to prime minister of the beleaguered reborn state of Israel, has no parallel in the annals of nations.” —Cynthia Ozick “Golda Meir—immigrant, Zionist, feminist, and wartime prime minister of Israel—claimed far more than one woman’s share of history. In Lioness, Francine Klagsbrun superbly captures Golda’s courage and unrelenting commitment to the founding and survival of a Jewish state.” —John A. Farrell, author of Richard Nixon: The Life “A masterful biography—it’s scholarly and gorgeously researched, but most of all it’s the vivid story of a tough, complicated, remarkable woman who led Israel during a crucial period in its history. “Klagsbrun’s prodigious biography goes far beyond previous hagiographies to place Golda’s personal life against the backdrop of the emergence of Israel on the world stage.

Published with a new afterword from the author―the classic, bestselling account of how the modern Middle East was created. “Wonderful...No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East.” ― Jack Miles, Los Angeles Book Review.

Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman drew upon his ten years of experience reporting from Lebanon and Israel to write this now-classic work of journalism. Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist―the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of five bestselling books, among them From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat . At the Times , he has won three Pulitzer Prizes: in 1983 for international reporting (from Lebanon), in 1988 for international reporting (from Israel), and in 2002 for his columns after the September 11th attacks. His fourth book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2005) became a #1 New York Times bestseller and received the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in November 2005.