After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights
Robert Meister
Columbia University Press, PB, 9780231150378
The way in which mainstream human rights discourse speaks of such evils as the Holocaust, slavery, or apartheid puts them solidly in the past. Its elaborate techniques of 'transitional' justice encourage future generations to move forward by creating a false assumption of closure, enabling those who are guilty to elude responsibility. This approach to history, common to late-twentieth-century humanitarianism, doesn't presuppose ... More/Buy
Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History
Antonio Mendez, Matt Baglio
Penguin, PB, 9780241964590
On 4 November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans hostage. Beneath this crisis another shocking story was known by only a select few: six Americans escaped the embassy and hid within the city. A top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet risky plan to rescue them. Disguising himself as a ... More/Buy
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East
Dilip Hiro
Interlink Publishing, PB, 9781566569040
In this up-to-date, painstakingly researched dictionary, author Dilip Hiro brings one of the most tumultuous regions of the world to our fingertips. It is easy-to-read, simple to use, authoritative, and comprehensive. It offers a wide range of alphabetically arranged information on topics ranging from current affairs, history, and politics to religions, literature, and tourist destinations. Topics covered include: Arab Spring, Arab-Israeli ... More/Buy
Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and its Consequences
James Buchan
John Murray, PB, 9781848547421
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a turning-point in modern history. The destruction of the Iranian monarchy not only upset the political order in the Middle East and brought on a quarter-century of warfare, but introduced a new way to look at history. In DAYS OF GOD James Buchan lives each moment of the revolution through the eyes of ordinary people ... More/Buy
Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power
Larbi Sadiki
Routledge, PB, 9780415505680
Popular uprisings and revolts across the Arab Middle East have often resulted in a democratic faragh or void in power (Sadiki, 2004). How society seeks to fill that void, regardless of whether the regime falls or survives, is the common trajectory followed by the seven empirical case studies published here for the first time. This edited volume seeks to unpack the ... More/Buy
Ending Holy Wars: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Internal Armed Conflict
Isak Svensson
UQP, PB, 9780702249563
Ending Holy Wars explores how religious dimensions affect the possibilities for conflict resolution in civil war. This is the first book that systematically tries to map out the religious dimensions of internal armed conflicts and explain the conditions under which religious dimensions impede peaceful settlement. It draws upon empirical work on global data, based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), ... More/Buy
Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country - and Why They Can't Make Peace
Patrick Tyler
Granta, PB, 9781846272745
'Israel, six decades after its founding, remains a nation in thrall to an original martial impulse.' Born of idealism, under David Ben Gurion and his proteges, Dayan, Sharon and Peres, Israel came to prioritize security at all costs, and to seize land and water whenever opportunity arose. The security state erected around the nation is the most efficient, relentless, intelligent and ... More/Buy
Futurevision: Scenarios for the world in 2040
Richard Watson, Oliver Freeman
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070098
Will relentless consumerism end up destroying our planet? Or can science and technology allow us to innovate our way out of trouble? Perhaps a greater social consciousness and community-based living will take over - or, conversely, the competition for limited resources may result in everyone fighting for themselves. Drawing on these four possible futures, Richard Watson and Oliver Freeman invite us ... More/Buy
The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
Shlomo Sand
Verso Books, HB, 9781844679461
What is a homeland, and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for them throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest running ... More/Buy
KANDAK: Fighting with Afghans
Patrick Hennessey
Allen Lane, PB, 9781846144066
When Patrick Hennessey returned home from Afghanistan, battle-worn, exhilarated, unsure if he'd see anything like it in his life again, he left behind him bands of friendship forged in the heat of the moment between living and dying. The comrades he left furthest behind were Qiam, Syed and Majhib. They are still there in the dust and heat of Helmand, soldiers ... More/Buy
Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial
Vinayak Chaturvedi
Verso Books, PB, 9781844676378
Inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in this book sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of 'history from below'. Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward SAid, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques ... More/Buy
Mapping the Nation
Gopal Balakrishnan
Verso Books, PB, 9781844676507
In the two decades since Samuel P. Huntington proposed his influential and troubling 'clash of civilitations' thesis, nationalism has only continued to puzzle and frustate commentators, policy analysts and political theoriests. No consensus exists concerning its identity, genesis, or future. Are we reverting to the petty nationalisms of the nineteenth century or evolving into a globalized, supranational world? Has the nation-state ... More/Buy
Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics
Daniel Stedman Jones
Princeton University Press, HB, 9780691151571
How did American and British policymakers become so enamored with free markets, deregulation, and limited government? This book - the first comprehensive transatlantic history of the rise of neoliberal politics - presents a surprising answer. Based on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement, "Masters of the Universe" traces the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar ... More/Buy
Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power
David Priestland
Allen Lane, HB, 9781846144851
We live in an age ruled by merchants, and until recently it seemed to us self-evident that their free-market imperatives were the ones that mattered. Competition, flexibility and profit are still the common currency, even at a time when Western countries have been driven off a cliff by these very values. But will it always be this way? David Priestland ... More/Buy
Mossad: The Great Operations
Mishal Bar-Zohar
Vintage, PB, 9781742756264
The secrets behind Mossad, the world's most respected and enigmatic Secret Service Organization This book tells what should have been known and isn't - that Israel's hidden force is as formidable as its recognised physical strength. - Shimon Peres, President of Israel Mossad vividly brings alive a boots-on-the-ground approach to the most dangerous missions of the 60-year history of the world-renowned ... More/Buy
Mullahs Without Mercy: Human Rights and Nuclear Weapons
Geoffrey Robertson
Vintage, PB, 9781742758213
What is worse: Iran getting the bomb or the US bombing Iran? - Will our children ever live in a world without nukes? - Can states that mass-murder their own people be trusted with a weapon that mass-murders? - Will a nuclear explosion change the climate before climate change does? In Mullahs Without Mercy, Geoffrey Robertson explores these and other awesome ... More/Buy
Occupy Money: Creating an Economy Where Everybody Wins
Margrit Kennedy
New Society Publishers, PB, 9780865717312
For many years financial insiders have hidden economic truths by describing them in arcane terms that no layperson can understand. Occupy Money uses clear, simple and concise language to explain how money will serve people instead of people serving money, and in doing so it issues a challenge to the very foundations of conventional economic doctrine. A must-read. Margrit Kennedy is ... More/Buy
Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Ter ritories, 2000-2010
Breaking the Silence
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070142
The very name of the Israel Defence Forces - which many Israelis speak of as 'the most moral army in the world' - suggests that its primary mission is the defence of the country's territory. Indeed, both internationally and within Israel, support for the occupation of Palestinian territory rests on the belief that the army's actions and presence in the West ... More/Buy
The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breachin U.S. History
Chase Madar
Verso Bppls, PB, 9781781680698
Bradley Manning was arrested, imprisoned in solitary confinement for nine months, and court-martialed for leaking nearly half a million classified government documents including the infamous "Collateral Murder" gunsight video. He was an intelligence analyst in the US Army's 10th Mountain Division, is twenty-four and comes from Crescent, Oklahoma. But who is Private First Class Bradley Manning? Why did he commit the ... More/Buy
The People Speak: Voices that Changed Britain
Colin Firth, Anthony Arnove
Canongate, PB, 9780857864468
"The idea was simple. Take the most impassioned speeches about the fight for what is right and bring them to life for a new generation. The reason why it's so powerful is because it's about everything that matters to us: love and life, sex and death, justice and freedom. We've found some amazing speeches from the most unlikely places, British voices ... More/Buy
Pocket World in Figures 2013
The Economist
Profile Books, HB, 9781846685996
The 2013 edition of this perennial favourite has been completely updated, revised and expanded with many new features. Full of facts and figures about the world today - on subjects as diverse as geography, population and demographics, business, finance and the economy, transport, tourism and the environment, society, culture and crime - it is a mine of fascinating data that will ... More/Buy
Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home
Penny Johnson (ed)
Interlink Publishing, PB, 9781566569064
How do Palestinians live, imagine, and reflect on home and exile in this period of a stateless and transitory Palestine and a sharp escalation in Israeli state violence and accompanying Palestinian oppression? How can exile and home be written? In this volume of new writing, fifteen innovative and outstanding Palestinian writers - essayists, poets, novelists, critics, artists, and memoirists - respond ... More/Buy
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
Andrew Feinstein
Penguin, PB, 9780141040059
Andrew Feinstein is on a mission: to expose the lies, corruption and death-dealing at the heart of the modern arms trade. Whether it is the scandalous BAE Systems deals involving Britain and Saudi Arabia or the US Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex, he lays bare shocking stories of bribery, theft and murder which lie at the heart of the global trade in weapons of ... More/Buy
Snowing in Bali: The Incredible Inside Account of Bali's Hidden Drug World
Kathryn Bonella
Macmillan, PB, 9781742611327
Snowing in Bali is the story of the drug trafficking and dealing scene that's made Bali one of the world's most important destinations in the global distribution of narcotics. With its central location to the Asia Pacific market, its thriving tourist industry to act as cover for importation, and a culture of corruption that can easily help law enforcement turn a ... More/Buy
Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt's Road to Revolt
Hazem Kandil
Verso Books, HB, 9781844679614
Revolutions are difficult to understand, let alone predict. Egypt's revolt last year was no exception. The military abandonment of Mubarak confused many observers, who had always assumed that the leader and the generals stood or fell together. But as the violence of the transitional period discredited the armed forces, academics fell back in relief on the same age-old asumptions about officers ... More/Buy
Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play
James C Scott
Princeton University Press, HB, 9780691155296
James Scott taught us what's wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, "Two Cheers for Anarchism" is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of ... More/Buy
Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation & Movement Restriction
Nadia Abu-Zahra
Pluto Press, PB, 9780745325279
Based on first-hand accounts and extensive fieldwork, Unfree in Palestine reveals the role played by identity documents in Israel's apartheid policies towards the Palestinians, from the red passes of the 1950s to the orange, green and blue passes of today. The authors chronicle how since the time of the Ottoman Empire millions of Palestinians have been denationalised through the bureaucratic tools ... More/Buy
Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens
Richard Seymour
Verso Books, PB, 9781844679904
Among the ranks of the ex-Leftists, most of whom are readily forgotten, Christopher Hitchens stands out as someone determined to do just that. Rejecting the well-worn paths of hard-right evangelism and capitalis 'realism', he identified with nothing outside his own idiosyncrasies. A habitual mugwump who occassionaly masqueraded as a Marxist, the role he adopted late in his career - as a ... More/Buy
Utopia and Injustice: Prologues to the Palestine-Israel War
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Interlink Publishing, PB, 9781566569057
Most of the literature on Israel/Palestine gives us blow-by-blow descriptions of who did what to whom, and when. Beyond unfolding events, it is important to focus on the permanent contours of the situation, a continuing confrontation between settler colonialism and the indigenous population of West Asia. The Palestine War, as analyzed here, started in 1799 with an invasion by Napoleon, barely ... More/Buy
Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism
Jon Bailes, Cihan Aksan (eds)
Pluto Press, PB, 9780745332413
The term 'terrorism' is often applied exclusively to non-state groups or specific 'rogue states'. Far less attention is given to state terrorism carried out or sponsored by democracies, most notably the United States. History shows that this state terrorism has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Weapon of the Strong analyses the forms of US state terrorism through ... More/Buy
Who Rules South Africa?
Martin Plaut, Paul Holden
Biteback Publishing, PB, 9781849544085
South Africa is a country poorly understood in the wider world. There are two main views of the country that persist in the international consciousness and which are often propagated by South Africans themselves. One view holds that after the end of apartheid South Africa's problems were at an end. The other claims that a coterie of criminals is turning one ... More/Buy