middle east

Profiles twenty Middle Eastern countries, presenting statistics and discussing their peoples, histories, economies, and foreign relations; and includes twelve articles on the region from newspapers and magazines around the world.

In the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia a caravan of American and British counter-terrorism experts search for a deadly group of Al Qaeda terrorists threatening the world's future.

Examines Islam's place in the Middle East, focusing on how the country's medieval and modern history has led to the interweaving of the sacred and secular in its political and intellectual life.

Explores the people, customs, and faiths from ancient Middle Eastern civilazations.

Presents a comprehensive history of the Middle East from ancient times to the present, including the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, the Crusades, expansion of Islam, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and modern Iran.

In 2008, Nathan Deuel, a former editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, and his wife, a National Public Radio foreign correspondent, moved to the deeply Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to see for themselves what was happening in the Middle East. There they had a daughter, and later, while his wife filed reports from Baghdad and Syria, car bombs erupted and one night a firefight raged outside the family's apartment in Beirut. Their marriage strained, and they struggled with the decision to stay or go home. At once a meditation on fatherhood, an unusual memoir of a war correspondent's spouse, and a first-hand account from the front lines of the most historic events of recent days-- the Arab Spring, the end of the Iraq war, and the unrest in Syria-- Friday Was the Bomb is a searing collection of timely and absorbing essays.

Traces the history of the Fertile Crescent, the area stretching between the Persian Gulf and central Israel, from the New Stone Age to the Roman conquest.

Surveys the history of the Fertile Crescent and the key factors that have shaped the Middle East conflict.