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Coerced Liberation: Muslim Women in Soviet Tajikistan
Par Zamira Abman. 2024
In 1924, the Bolshevik regime began an unprecedented campaign to forcibly emancipate the Muslim women of Tajikistan. The emancipatory reforms…
included unveiling women, passing progressive family code laws, and educating women. By the 1950s, the Soviet regime largely succeeded in putting an end to veiling, child marriage, polygamy, and bride payments. Yet today there is a resurgence in these practices the Bolsheviks claimed to have eliminated. Coerced Liberation reveals that the Soviet regime transformed the lives of urban women within a single generation but without lasting effect. Drawing on unique primary sources, the book examines why this occurred. It addresses questions that are pertinent to ongoing debates in the international arena: What happens when an outside force attempts to modernize a society deeply rooted in centuries of patriarchal norms and values? In what ways can a devout religious rural community respond to, survive, and adapt to such interventions? And how does a state-centred, top-down approach towards women’s emancipation work? Coerced Liberation presents critical insights for readers interested in gender dynamics within Muslim communities, the roles of women in Islam, the resurgence of Islam in former colonial territories, the effectiveness of a top-down approach towards women’s movements, and more.Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East
Par Peter Hill. 2024
'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse.…
Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha&’il Mishaqa&’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he&’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa&’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It&’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan And The Mongol Military System
Par Timothy May. 2016
The renowned historian &“combines exhaustive research and accessible prose for this . . . definitive study&” of the Mongol empire&’s military practices…
(Publishers Weekly). The armies of the Mongol empire are one of the most successful, yet least understood, military forces in history. Often viewed as screaming throngs of horsemen who conquered by sheer force of numbers, they were in fact highly organized regiments who blindsided their opponents with innovative tactics and combat skills. Through the leadership of brilliant military strategists, they achieved the largest land empire ever established, stretching across Asia and into eastern Europe. In this pioneering study, historian Timothy May demonstrates how the Mongol military developed from a tribal levy into a disciplined and complex military organization. He describes the make-up of the Mongol army from its inception to the demise of the empire. With profiles of Mongol military leaders such as Chinggis Khan—also known as Genghis Khan—May shows how their strength, quality and versatility made them the pre-eminent warriors of their time.Drop Zone Borneo: Life and Times of an RAF Co-Pilot Far East, 1962-65
Par Roger Annett. 2006
In 1963 the Indonesian Army that threatened Borneo numbered 330,000 men, plus three thousand Commandos. Of these, six thousand were…
within 20 miles of the Borneo frontier. This grew to thirteen thousand in early 1965. From mid-way through 1964, British troops and their allies who were defending the border started to make offensive incursions into Indonesian Borneo—these operations were codenamed "Claret". Taken into account the confrontational nature of the campaign, casualties sustained in Borneo were surprisingly light. That in the whole of the Borneo campaign there were no fatalities among the RAF supply-dropping transports was extraordinary. The border area between the Indonesian and Malaysian parts of Borneo was one of the most inaccessible areas of mountainous jungle anywhere in the world—an entire army was kept supplied in the field for the complete campaign. This is the exciting account from a pilot who flew the dangerous flying missions and relates the tenseness and stresses of Jungle life in those dangerous days.The Founding of Israel: The Journey to a Jewish Homeland from Abraham to the Holocaust
Par Martin Connolly. 2018
A chronological history of the Jewish people—from the earliest attempts to establish a homeland during Biblical times to the creation…
of Israel. More than seventy years ago in 1948, the State of Israel came into being amidst great controversy. How did the state arise? What led to the founding of Israel? This book sets out to give a chronological journey of the Jewish people from the time Abraham came out of the land of Ur three thousand years ago, until six million of them died in the horror of the Holocaust under Hitler and his Nazi regime. It recounts the many expulsions from the land in which they lived, the suffering under Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, the destruction of their temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, and finally, genocide and the expulsion by the Romans in 132 AD creating a diaspora across the world. The Jews would be charged with killing God and throughout the following centuries would be expelled from countries, burned alive after being locked in synagogues or at the stake, have all their property seized, and get herded into ghettoes. All of this until that fatal Holocaust, which attempted to wipe them from the face of the earth. This book recounts their story to achieve a homeland, using a wide-range of historical documents to tell the story of humiliation, suffering, poverty, and death. It tells of religious persecution that would not let them rest, and as their journey enters the twentieth century, gives a behind-the-scenes look at how governments manipulated the Middle East and exacerbated divisions.Wingate's Lost Brigade: The First Chindit Operations, 1943
Par Philip D. Chinnery. 2010
With the Japanese seemingly unbeatable after their conquest of Malaya, Singapore, Thailand and much of Burma, Orde Wingates plans to…
conduct long range deep penetration operations behind Japanese lines in Burma were audacious to say the least. His Chindit operations (so called after Chindwin River) were hugely demanding on those taking part who suffered terrible deprivation in the harsh climatic and jungle conditions. While costly in terms of lives lost, the operations inflicted damage to the Japanese and raised Allied morale. The author has compiled a fascinating account of Wingates 77 Brigade using the personal accounts of survivors, as well as Wingates own report and post-war interrogation of Japanese generals. A remarkable story emerges of survival, courage and extreme hardship. The author evaluates the successes and failures of the mission.A Pandemic in Residence: Essays from a Detroit Hospital
Par Selina Mahmood. 2021
A debut essay collection of remarkable breadth and erudition by a young Pakistani-American doctor and writer. During the early months…
of the COVID-19 pandemic, Selina Mahmood‚Äîin the middle of the first year of her neurology residency‚Äîfound scraps of time between grueling shifts to write. The resulting A Pandemic in Residence: Essays from a Detroit Hospital is her personal and meticulous document of an unprecedented year in medicine, and the debut of a young and uncommon talent. In the tradition of writers like Oliver Sacks and Paul Kalanithi, Dr. Mahmood takes the science of neurology and spins it into poetry, exploring theories of the mind, Pakistani-American identity, immigration, family, the history of medicine, and, of course, the challenges of becoming a physician in the midst of a global health crisis. Skipping nimbly across continents and drawing inspiration from an array of sources ranging from Thomas Edison to Yuval Harari to Beyoncv©, she has with this collection crafted an elegant, incisive, utterly original investigation. A Pandemic in Residence is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into our universal search for meaning.Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Par Lucy Birmingham, David McNeill. 2012
A riveting account of Japan's triple disaster and an insightful look into what the responses of its people reveal about…
the national characterBlending history, science, and gripping storytelling, Strong in the Rain brings the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 and its immediate aftermath to life through the eyes of the men and women who experienced it. Following the narratives of six individuals, the book traces the shape of a disaster and the heroics it prompted, including that of David Chumreonlert, a Texan with Thai roots, trapped in his school's gymnasium with hundreds of students and teachers as it begins to flood, and Taro Watanabe, who thought nothing of returning to the Fukushima plant to fight the nuclear disaster, despite the effects that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. This is a beautifully written and moving account from Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill of how the Japanese experienced one of the worst earthquakes in history and endured its horrific consequences.Can You Hear Me Now?: Part One (Can You Hear Me Now? Ser. #1)
Par Annie O'Sullivan. 2012
First published as only parts of her life, this book brings together the full life story of the woman known…
as Annie O'Sullivan. Horribly abused at the hand of her father, it is a collection of essays that graphically recount memories of her life as a confused child and young adult as she careened through life without compass, to ultimately, and against all odds, prosper. Culminating in the event that brought a degree of closure to her torture, O'Sullivan brings the reader on an intimate life journey through the eyes of this child&’s misunderstanding, will to persevere and desire to seek goodness despite her circumstances.Terrifying, infuriating and uplifting, this book touches not only survivors; but parents, childcare workers and teachers; reminding us of the true vulnerability of children and our collective responsibility to protect them.Unfold: Poetry + Prose
Par Ari B. Cofer. 2023
From the author of paper girl and the knives that made her comes unfold, a poetic, aching, and hopeful retelling…
of realizations made while on the journey to healing from both loss of love and loss of self.Through poetry and short essays, unfold shows that true growth comes from being unafraid to face what&’s hidden inside, to be vulnerable, and to be unashamed of what we find when we finally open up.The Essays of Leonard Michaels
Par Leonard Michaels. 2009
NONFICTION FROM "ONE OF THE STRONGEST AND MOST ARRESTING PROSE TALENTS OF HIS GENERATION" (LARRY MCMURTRY) Leonard Michaels was a…
writer of unfailing emotional honesty. His memoirs, originally scattered through his story collections, are among the most thrilling evocations of growing up in the New York of the 1950s and '60s—and of continuing to grow up, in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and '80s, as a writer, teacher, lover, and reader. The same honesty and excitement shine in Michaels's highly personal commentaries on culture and art. Whether he's asking what makes a story, reviewing the history of the word "relationship," or reflecting on sex in the movies, he is funny, penetrating, surprising, always alive on the page. The Essays of Leonard Michaels is the definitive collection of his nonfiction and shows, yet again, why Michaels was singled out for praise by fellow writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, and Charles Baxter. Beyond autobiography or criticism, it is the record of a sensibility and of a style that is unmatched in American letters.100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is an incisive, idiosyncratic collection on life and theater from major American…
playwright Sarah Ruhl. This is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life. Sarah Ruhl is a mother of three and one of America's best-known playwrights. She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."The Wound and the Bow contains seven essays by "The greatest literary critic of the twentieth century.” -New York magazine.Combining…
biographical and critical sketches, Edmund Wilson writes brilliantly on a wide-range of authors including Dickens, Kipling, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce, Jacques Casanova, and Sophocles. "In the best tradition of literary criticism… combines exact information with shrewd and searching penetration into the personal life of the artist."-The New York TimesMFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction
Par Chad Harbach. 2014
Writers write—but what do they do for money?In a widely read essay entitled "MFA vs NYC," bestselling novelist Chad Harbach…
(The Art of Fielding) argued that the American literary scene has split into two cultures: New York publishing versus university MFA programs. This book brings together established writers, MFA professors and students, and New York editors, publicists, and agents to talk about these overlapping worlds, and the ways writers make (or fail to make) a living within them. Should you seek an advanced degree, or will workshops smother your style? Do you need to move to New York, or will the high cost of living undo you? What's worse—having a day job or not having health insurance? How do agents decide what to represent? Will Big Publishing survive? How has the rise of MFA programs affected American fiction? The expert contributors, including George Saunders, Elif Batuman, and Fredric Jameson, consider all these questions and more, with humor and rigor. MFA vs NYC is a must-read for aspiring writers, and for anyone interested in the present and future of American letters.My 1980s & Other Essays
Par Wayne Koestenbaum. 2013
Wayne Koestenbaum returns with a zesty and hyper-literate collection of personal and critical essays on the 1980s, including essays on…
major cultural figures such as Andy Warhol and Brigitte Bardot.Wayne Koestenbaum has been described as "an impossible lovechild from a late-night, drunken three-way between Joan Didion, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag" (Bidoun). In My 1980s and Other Essays, a collection of extravagant range and style, he rises to the challenge of that improbable description.My 1980s and Other Essays opens with a series of manifestos—or, perhaps more appropriately, a series of impassioned disclosures, intellectual and personal. It then proceeds to wrestle with a series of major cultural figures, the author's own lodestars and lodestones: literary (John Ashbery, Roberto Bolaño, James Schuyler), artistic (Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol), and simply iconic (Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Lana Turner). And then there is the personal—the voice, the style, the flair—that is unquestionably Koestenbaum. It amounts to a kind of intellectual autobiography that culminates in a string of passionate calls to creativity; arguments in favor of detail and nuance, and attention; a defense of pleasure, hunger, and desire in culture and experience.Koestenbaum is perched on the cusp of being a true public intellectual—his venues are more mainstream than academic, his style is eye-catching, his prose unfailingly witty and passionate, his interests profoundly wide-ranging and popular. My 1980s should be the book that pushes Koestenbaum off that cusp and truly into the public eye.All One Universe: A Collection Of Fiction And Nonfiction
Par Poul Anderson. 1988
Poul Anderson himself has put together a retrospective collection of his recent writings, fiction and nonfiction, under the title All…
One Universe. This is the first major Poul Anderson collection in a decade. It encompasses all his strengths as a teller of tales and, in addition, provides a running commentary in the story notes and in the essays on other literary figures such as Rudyard Kipling, Johannes B. Jensen, and John W. Campbell, Jr., commentary that illuminates the fiction, gives personal insight into the mind of this fine writer, and provides a unifying personality for All One Universe. All One Universe, then, represents the new best of Poul Anderson. It is a rich, varied selection of quintessential science fiction as well as four essays, mostly from recent years, by one of the great science fiction writers of the century. His stories are filled with roaring energy, the soul of poetry, and dark imaginings. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.Not Even My Name: A True Story
Par Thea Halo. 2001
A riveting account of exile from Turkish genocide, brought to light for the first time ever in Sano Halo's personal…
story Not Even My Name exposes the genocide carried out during and after WW I in Turkey, which brought to a tragic end the 3000-year history of the Pontic Greeks (named for the Pontic Mountain range below the Black Sea). During this time, almost 2 million Pontic Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered and millions of others were exiled. Not Even My Name is the unforgettable story of Sano Halo's survival, as told to her daughter, Thea, and of their trip to Turkey in search of Sano's home 70 years after her exile. Sano Halo was a 10-year-old girl when she was torn from her ancient, pastoral way of life in the mountains and sent on a death march that annihilated her family. Stripped of everything she had ever held dear, even her name, Sano was sold by her surrogate family into marriage when still a child to a man three times her age. Not Even My Name follows Sano's marriage, the raising of her ten children in New York City, and her transformation as an innocent girl who was forced to move from a bucolic life to the 20th century in one bold stride. Written in haunting and eloquent prose, Not Even My Name weaves a seamless texture of individual and group memory, evoking all the suspense and drama of the best told tales.The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City
Par Anna Sherman. 2019
An elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo and its residentsFrom 1632 until 1854, Japan’s rulers restricted contact with foreign countries,…
a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns’ city.An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman’s journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers’ city: “A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness.”The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer who presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people.Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving…
every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)—South Korea's most famous actress—and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader's dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated." After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty. Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader's film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il's trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, author Paul Fischer's A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.Talking to Strangers: Selected Essays, Prefaces, and Other Writings, 1967–2017
Par Paul Auster. 2019
Talking to Strangers is a freshly curated collection of prose, spanning fifty years of work and including famous as well…
as never-before-published early writings, from 2018 Man Booker Prize–finalist Paul Auster.Beginning with a short philosophical meditation written when he was twenty and concluding with nine political pieces that take on such issues as homelessness, 9/11, and the link between soccer and war, the 44 pieces gathered in this volume offer a wide-ranging view of celebrated novelist Paul Auster’s thoughts on a multitude of classic and contemporary writers, the high-wire exploits of Philippe Petit, how to improve life in New York City (in collaboration with visual artist Sophie Calle), and the long road he has traveled with his beloved manual typewriter.While writing for the New York Review of Books and other publications in the mid-1970s, young poet Auster gained recognition as an astute literary critic with essays on Laura Riding, John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, and others. By the late seventies and early eighties, as the poet was transforming himself into a novelist, he maintained an active double life by continuing his work as a translator and editing the groundbreaking anthology, The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry. His prefaces to some of these books are included in Talking to Strangers, among them a heart-wrenching account of Stéphane Mallarmé’s response to the death of his eight-year-old son, Anatole.In recent years, Auster has pushed on with explorations into the work of American artists spanning various periods and disciplines: the notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the films of Jim Jarmusch, the writings of painter-collagist-illustrator Joe Brainard, and the three-hit shutout thrown by journeyman right-hander Terry Leach of the Mets. Also included here are several rediscovered works that were originally delivered in public: a 1982 lecture on Edgar Allan Poe, a 1999 blast against New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and one of the funniest introductions a poetry reading ever heard in the state of New Jersey.A collection of soaring intelligence and deepest humanity, Talking to Strangers is an essential book by “the most distinguished American writer of [his] generation . . . indeed its only author . . . with any claim to greatness.” (The Spectator)