The Prince: The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan by William Simpson

The Prince
The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan
William Simpson
AED 94.00
ISBN 9780061189425

Description

A riveting portrait of one of the most enigmatic yet influential powerbrokers in America–Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al–Saud, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States from 1983–2005.

At a time when understanding our friends is as important as understanding our enemies, Prince Bandar bin Sultan remains one America's most enigmatic powerbrokers. As the illegitimate son of a Saudi prince and a servant girl, Prince Bandar overcame his unrecognized beginnings to rise as one of Saudi Arabia's brightest diplomatic stars, ultimately becoming the Ambassador to the United States–and one of the most influential men in Washington.

As Ambassador, Prince Bandar worked with CIA Director Bill Casey to fund covert CIA operations with Saudi petrodollars. He played a key role in the Iran–Contra affair; consulted with President Gorbachev to secure Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan; negotiated an end to the Iran–Iraq war; and, with Nelson Mandela, resolved the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Affair. He served under four different American presidencies and was called "Washington's indispensible operator" by the New Yorker.

Yet Prince Bandar was more than this. His entre into Washington society and the Oval Office was unmatched. George H.W. Bush took the Prince and his family on fishing vacations; First Lady Reagan used him to convey messages to her husband's Cabinet; Colin Powell would drop by his house to play racquetball.

About the Author

William Simpson was a classmate of Prince Bandar at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, where they became friends through a mutual interest in fencing during the two and a half years of their officer training. Simpson founded and was CEO of an Internet company, and also worked with a Mayfair-based hedge fund as President of North American Operations. After his retirement from the world of financial services, Simpson undertook this biography with the cooperation of Prince Bandar. Simpson lives in the United Kingdom.

arabia in search of the golden ages by michael hamilton morgan

Arabia In Search of the Golden Ages
Michael Hamilton Morgan
AED 174.00
ISBN 9781601090553

Description

Sheltered between the cradle of civilization and the busiest trade routes of the ancient world, the Arabian Peninsula is home to millennia-old civilizations that have blossomed and thrived in some of the world's harshest conditions. For many Westerners, their vision of the Arab world is skewed by contemporary political news, but Arabia is a land with a rich tradition of enlightenment, a vibrant society and a past and present that is historically entwined with the cultural roots of the West.

The February 2010 film Arabia 3D shines a new light on the origins of this culture shrouded in mystery and the films companion book, Arabia: In Search of the Golden Ages, introduces readers to the rich tapestry of Arabian life: the hajj, where three million Muslims descend up on the holy city of Mecca to reaffirm their faith in the largest single human gathering on Earth; the depths of the Red Sea explored as part of an underwater search for ancient shipwrecks and clues to the past; and the everyday traditions of the region such as a festive henna party for a new bride-to-be. Former diplomat Michael Hamilton Morgan guides this journey and visual celebration that transforms how Western audiences view what is both an exotic land and cultural partner.

About the Author

Michael Hamilton Morgan is the author of three books of historical non-fiction, and has appeared on Al Jazeera, Good Morning America, and BBC World/Public Radio International. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A HISTORY OF ARAB PEOPLES BY ALBERT HOURANI

A History of Arab Peoples
Albert Hourani
AED 63.00
ISBN 9780571226641

Description

In a work of profound and lasting importance, Albert Hourani tells the definitive history of the Arab peoples from the seventh century, when the new religion of Islam began to spread from the Arabian Peninsula westwards, to the present day.

A History of the Arab Peoples is a masterly distillation of a lifetime of scholarship and a unique insight into a perpetually troubled region. For this edition, Malise Ruthven continues the history to include such recent events as the crisis in Iraq, the civil war in Algeria and the aftermath of September 11th.

About the Author

Albert Hourani was elected a Fellow of Magdalen and appointed Lecturer (later Reader) in the Modern History of the Middle East at Oxford in 1948. From 1958 until 1971 he was Director of the Middle East Centre. He died in 1993.

Portraits by Steve McCurry

Portraits
Steve McCurry
AED 104
ISBN 9780714838397

Description

Steve McCurry never set out to take portraits. In 1985, he photographed an Afghan girl for the National Geographic. The intensity of the subject's eyes and her compelling gaze made this one of the most widely and consistently celebrated portraits in the history of contemporary photography.

This accompanies the other remarkable faces he has encountered whilst travelling throughout the world, collected together in an engaging and strangely moving series of unique street portraits: unposed, unstylized images of people that reveal the true universality of the depths of human emotion.

Critically acclaimed and recognized internationally for his classic reportage, over the last twenty years he has worked on numerous assignments, travelling extensively throughout the Middle and Far East.

McCurry has won first prize in the World Press Awards, and was named Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1984. He is most famous for his evocative color photography, which has captured stories of human experience that, in the finest documentary tradition, transcend boundaries of language and culture.

• An intriguing collection of unposed and engaging colour portraits of people from all backgrounds and corners of the globe by award-winning photographer Steve McCurry
• Includes the famous 'Afghan Girl' photograph, and equally memorable images ranging from a bejewelled Indian bride to a Paraguayan cowboy - 255 photos in all
• Unstylized portraits of children, adolescents and adults from all walks of life reveal the universality of human emotion and the variety of personal adornment

About the Author

Born in Philadelphia, Steve McCurry studied history and cinematography at Pennsylvania State University before working as a freelance photographer in India. His career was launched when he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan, just before the Russian invasion, to take the first pictures of the conflict. Since then many of McCurry's images have become modern icons.

His coverage won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including the Iran-Iraq war, Beirut and the Gulf War. His travels have also taken him to South-east Asia and the spiritual temples of Angkor Wat and Cambodia, made known to many through his memorable images for National Geographic magazine.

A member of the prestigious international photo agency Magnum since 1986, McCurry is the recipient of numerous awards including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers Association. This was awarded in the same year in which he won an unprecedented four first prizes in the World Press Photo Contest. He has won the Olivier Rebbot Memorial Award twice.

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A History of Middle East Economics in the Twentieth Century By Roger Owen

A History of Middle East Economics in the Twentieth Century
Roger Owen & Sevket Pamuk
AED 117
ISBN 9781860642760

Description

This text offers an examination of the economic history of the principal Arab countries, Turkey and Israel since 1918. Using the state as its major economic analysis, it charts the growth of national income and issues of welfare and distribution over two periods, 1918-1945 and 1945-1990. Important trends are explored, including the patterns of colonial economic management, import substitution, the impact of the 1970s oil boom, and the current process of liberalization and structural adjustment.
 

The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta by David Waines

The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta: Uncommon Tales of a Medieval Adventurer
David Waines
AED 163
ISBN 9781845118051

Description

Ibn Battuta was, without doubt, one of the world's truly great travellers. Born in fourteenth-century Morocco, and a contemporary of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta has left us an account in his own words of his remarkable journeys throughout the Islamic world and beyond: journeys punctuated by adventure and peril, and stretching from his home in Tangiers to Zaytun in faraway China. Whether sojourning in Delhi and the Maldives, wandering through the mazy streets of Cairo and Damascus, or contesting with pirates and shipwreck, the indefatigable Ibn Battuta brings to vivid life a medieval world brimming with marvel and mystery. Carefully observing the great diversity of civilizations which he encountered, Ibn Battuta exhibits an omnivorous interest in such matters as food and drink, religious differences (between Christians, Hindus and Shi'a Muslims), ideas about purity and impurity, disease, women and sex. Recounting the many miracles which its author claims to have experienced personally, his al-rihla or 'Travelogue' is a fascinating mosaic of mysticism and reportage offering a prototype magic realism. David Waines discusses the subtleties of the al-rihla, revealing all the wonders of Ibn Battuta's world to the modern reader. This is a gripping treatment of the life and times of one of history's most daring, and at the same time most human, discoverers.

About the Author

David Waines is Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at Lancaster University. He wrote the bestselling textbook 'An Introduction to Islam', now in its second edition, and edited a volume entitled 'Patterns of Everyday Life' in the Formation of the Classical Islamic World series. 
 

A History of the Arabian Peninsula by Fahd Al Semmari

A History of the Arabian Peninsula
Fahd Al Semmari
AED 228
ISBN 9781845116880

Description

The importance of this collection lies in its origins: for the first time, leading Saudi Arabian historians have created a history of the Arabian Peninsula which analyzes that history from an internal Arabian perspective. The book explores the original Bedouin settlement of the region, the development of the major urban areas of Arabia during the Umayyad period, the socio-political and economic developments in the Hijad and Najd up to the eighteenth century into the modern era and the rise and development of the Saudi state. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the history of the Arabian Peninusla, not least because it provides a perspective from and a flavor of its local origins.

About the Author

Fahd al-Semmari is the General Director of the King Abdulaziz Foundation in Saudi Arabia. He is Editor-in-Chief of the al Darah periodical, and has a PhD in Modern History from the University of California, Riverside.
 

The Inshallah Paper by Andrew Trimbee

The Inshallah Paper
Andrew Trimbee
AED 101
ISBN 9780704371750

Description

This modern version of One Thousand and One Nights is a colourful no-holds-barred account of life in a largely traditional Arabia as the author fights to produce the Gulf's first English language newspaper.

Set in the The Kingdom of Bahrain, in a time when the pace of life was slower, the pages of this extraordinary odyssey are crowded with everything from sex-mad expatriates, a ghost and a mermaid to an encounter with the veteran foreign correspondent who felled Max Schmeling. There are lotharios and lesbians, a high seas murder, a two-fisted British prison warder, and the Bahrainis themselves, gentle and generous, who provide the backdrop for this revealing insight into a way of life largely gone, from the coffee ritual at the palace to crafts of yesteryear. From drunken diplomats to drunken journalists, Andrew Trimbee lifts the lid on life in a facinating, but mysterious, country as he intervenes to save his newspaper. The Inshallah Paper is a non-stop roller-coaster ride through drama, pathos, humour and suspense in a desert island setting straight out of the Arabian Nights.

About the Author

Andrew Trimbee is a former national newspaper journalist who has worked on the Daily Mail, The Times, and the Daily Telegraph where he was a chief sub-editor. In addition to the Middle East, he has lived in Kenya, where he was on the staff of the East African Standard, and the South of France. A freelance writer, he now lives in a fisherman's cottage on the North Yorkshire coast. He spends part of the year in a hilltop village near Granada, and travels extensively. Visit his site: www.theinshallahpaper.com
 

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlat

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad
Bee Rowlatt
AED 55
ISBN 9780141038537

Description

Would you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?

May's a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She's also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi'ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to reach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls. Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.

They should have nothing in common.

But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they also hatch an ingenious plan to help May escape the bombings of Baghdad...
 

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey

Inside the Kingdom
Robert Lacey
AED 68
ISBN 9780091931254

Description

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world, and yet the country's roiling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of the Prophet Muhammed over a thousand years ago. In a world where events in the Middle East continue to have geopolitical consequences far beyond the region's boundaries, an understanding of this complex nation is essential.

With Inside the Kingdom, British journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. More than twenty years after he first moved to the country to write about the Saudis at the end of the oil boom, Lacey has returned to find out how the consequences of the boom produced a society at war with itself. Filled with stories told by a broad range of Saudis, from high princes and ambassadors to men and women on the street, Inside the Kingdom is in many ways the story of the Saudis in their own words. It is a story of oil money that opened the door to Western ways, and produced a conservative backlash with effects that are still being felt today.

It is a story of kings and princes who worried more about keeping power than the dangerous consequences of empowering radical clerics. It is a story of men who challenged orthodoxy and risked prison or death in the name of furthering open society, and of women who defied laws saying they should not write, drive, or play sports. And, at its heart, it is a story of a people attempting to reconcile the religious separatism of the past and the rapidly changing world with which they are increasingly intertwined. Their success - or failure - will have powerful reverberations in their own country, and across the globe.