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When Arab Spring swept the region, Syria s President Bashar al-Asad thought that he was safe. Over the previous five years, the moderate opposition had been crushed. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, Syria had taken an anti-US stance since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Syrians were used to living under sanctions and being called terrorists. Asad told movie stars Brad and Angelina when they visited Damascus that he did not need personal security, because ordinary Syrians were protecting him. The Syrian president was convinced that Syrians loved him. And not only Syrians. Vogue agreed in its March 2011 puff piece that described Asad's wife as a Rose in the Desert. What of Syrian naysayers? Asad counted on his ruthless and all-seeing mukhabarat to keep them in line. Tackling politics, society, religion, and economy, Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances explores the eleven years of Asad s rule between the clampdown on Damascus Spring in 2001 and the challenge of escalating street protests in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012. Author Carsten Wieland interviewed the major opposition figures year by year over this decade. A valuable complement to the growing body of indigenous reporting (youtube videos, blog commentary), Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances provides context and expert insight that reveals the essential struggle and untold barbarity unfolding here in what Syrian government tourist brochures call the cradle of civilization.

This book is about raw visual imagination and the essential creative practice that's required to be a visual artist. The book is broken into three sections: Doodles, Sketchbooks, and Creative Tips. A fourth section is a Gallery of the author's paintings and illustrations ... with the story behind each. The Doodle section is devoted to some of the author's 500-piece doodle collection -- accumulated over many years, grouped according to subject and style. The Sketchbook section is about the ups and downs of keeping a sketchbook -- everyone does it differently but there are tips and rules of thumb that make the sketchbook an effective tool in personal and professional artistic development. The book offers encouragement and urges artists to overcome perfectionism in the interest of producing in a large enough volume to find one's native themes and to develop an individual style. Also includes a 90 day sketchbook journey -- with a different sketch for each day. Creative Tips is where the author examines the value of art and offers different ways to build your creative muscles.

Professor Tom Gage portrays eight modern educators and the development of their theories viewed from personal, cultural, and historical perspectives. He links their ideas to those of Fethullah Gülen, a highly influential educator of today who draws on an entirely different tradition.

Abu al-Abbas was one of Yasser Arafat's top generals. His name is forever linked to an operation in 1985 that sparked an international crisis: the hijacking of an Italian cruise liner named the Achille Lauro and the death of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American tourist. This memoir by the wife of Abu al-Abbas recalls an era of Palestinian resistance, the hard realities of a cause that faced impossible odds, and the irony that the death of a single man should outweigh all arguments of right and wrong.

Elizabeth Jenkins, 17, raised on a Congo mission station, is under intense pressure to marry the station doctor, twenty years her senior. Hours before the wedding, Elizabeth flees. She runs toward the wider world beyond the station. She reaches Nairobi, a place of danger for a single woman without a protecting clan. Can she survive? This novel chronicles the journey of Liz across two continents, in and out of the arms of three lovers, to find a life she can call her own.

"It sounds like a horror movie". That's what Stephen Fife's friend said when he told her what happened at his private prep school in New York City. "Fifteen teachers messing with students at the same high school?....How is that even possible?" she asked. Indeed. When one man abused 11 boys at Penn State, there was shock and horror both inside the university community and out, and legal action swiftly followed. But at Horace Mann School, where teachers regularly abused boys over three decades, no formal acknowledgement or independent investigation has taken place. And because of the restrictive statute of limitations in New York, no lawsuits can be filed. Stephen Fife, a poet, playwright, and screenwriter, whose most recent screenplay, "Blue Kiss", was just optioned by Fable Entertainment (to be packaged by Paradigm), was one of these abused boys. He has written a compelling, soul-baring account of his experience. Fife's mentor, an English teacher who praised his writing and told him he could be a famous poet (if he worked closely with him and did everything he advised), used his power over the teenage boy to sexually attack him in a hotel room on a school-sponsored trip. Later he lured Fife to his apartment repeatedly, where the abuse continued. This was 1970-71, before the days of iphones and selfies. When 17 year-old Fife finally found the courage to report the abuse to the associate headmaster, he was told that without solid evidence, he had better keep quiet. An accusation without hard proof, said the associate headmaster, would put Fife's stellar college recommendation letters in jeopardy. To go public would mean risking his Ivy League aspirations and his future as a writer, as well as informing his parents. At the time, Fife did not know he was one of many victims. Nor did he know that Mr Berman, the teacher who abused him, was just one of many teachers at Horace Mann molesting students. Only years later, after an article in the New York Times Magazine named other teachers as well as some administrators (and didn't mention Mr Berman), did Fife realize the extent of the abuse. Hoping to provide insight into what happened at Horace Mann (including suicide by many of the victims, and obsessive suicidal thoughts of his own), Fife is trying to compel Horace Mann to cooperate in an independent investigation. With the publication of this book he also seeks to change the statute of limitations laws, so that future victims will not be prevented from going to court; and to provide moral support for his fellow victims, who were betrayed by adults they trusted. The book also provides practical advice to parents: how to recognise the threat of predatory adults and the signs of molestation, and how to handle the emotional fall out, if abuse does occur.

"It sounds like a horror movie". That's what Stephen Fife's friend said when he told her what happened at his private prep school in New York City. "Fifteen teachers messing with students at the same high school?....How is that even possible?" she asked. Indeed. When one man abused 11 boys at Penn State, there was shock and horror both inside the university community and out, and legal action swiftly followed. But at Horace Mann School, where teachers regularly abused boys over three decades, no formal acknowledgement or independent investigation has taken place. And because of the restrictive statute of limitations in New York, no lawsuits can be filed. Stephen Fife, a poet, playwright, and screenwriter, whose most recent screenplay, "Blue Kiss", was just optioned by Fable Entertainment (to be packaged by Paradigm), was one of these abused boys. He has written a compelling, soul-baring account of his experience. Fife's mentor, an English teacher who praised his writing and told him he could be a famous poet (if he worked closely with him and did everything he advised), used his power over the teenage boy to sexually attack him in a hotel room on a school-sponsored trip. Later he lured Fife to his apartment repeatedly, where the abuse continued. This was 1970-71, before the days of iphones and selfies. When 17 year-old Fife finally found the courage to report the abuse to the associate headmaster, he was told that without solid evidence, he had better keep quiet. An accusation without hard proof, said the associate headmaster, would put Fife's stellar college recommendation letters in jeopardy. To go public would mean risking his Ivy League aspirations and his future as a writer, as well as informing his parents. At the time, Fife did not know he was one of many victims. Nor did he know that Mr Berman, the teacher who abused him, was just one of many teachers at Horace Mann molesting students. Only years later, after an article in the New York Times Magazine named other teachers as well as some administrators (and didn't mention Mr Berman), did Fife realize the extent of the abuse. Hoping to provide insight into what happened at Horace Mann (including suicide by many of the victims, and obsessive suicidal thoughts of his own), Fife is trying to compel Horace Mann to cooperate in an independent investigation. With the publication of this book he also seeks to change the statute of limitations laws, so that future victims will not be prevented from going to court; and to provide moral support for his fellow victims, who were betrayed by adults they trusted. The book also provides practical advice to parents: how to recognise the threat of predatory adults and the signs of molestation, and how to handle the emotional fall out, if abuse does occur.

The modern Middle East often seems like a web of problems none of which has proven more intractable over the last half century than the Israeli-Arab conflict. One of the core issues is the Israeli claim to ownership of modern-day real estate based on ancient stories that have been enshrined in scripture, promoted by politicians, and buttressed by Hollywood. In this book two revisionist thinkers expose what they argue are the tenuous underpinnings of these claims. Was the Exodus of scripture actually a Hebrew exodus. Was the Moses depicted by Charlton Heston actually a Hebrew leader? Or were they echoes of a much earlier exodus of Hyksos, the invasive people to first conquer and reign over Egyptians? The authors argue that neither Moses nor the Hebrews were in Egypt until around 1000 BCE -- 500 years after the earlier Exodus is known to have taken place. They go on to sift through research of an Hyksos evacuation of Egypt led by an Eastern leader who is far different than the Moses with whom we are familiar.

David Lang was once a big deal - a cult hero who wrote and directed the underground horror flick Zombie Film Schooland its two sequels in the late 1980s, earning himself the pop-culture nickname of Zombie Guy. But now it s the late 1990s and David often feels like a real zombie guy, just another Hollywood script doctor living off his former glory. The only thing that makes David feel really alive is his love for Holly Markham, a beautiful, brilliant and complicated cabaret singer and writer an unstable planet, David calls her, as sometimes they make love for days, while other times she freezes him out completely. David and Holly seem to have finally reached the end of their relationship s twists and turns when Holly at 42 discovers that she s pregnant. Even David isn't sure that going forward with the pregnancy is a good idea and Holly has no doubt that it could never work. Then again, Holly may never have another chance to be a mom. And who is that otherworldly being that David thinks he sees on their bed?

Contemporary readers, who wonder at the British and American knack for misguided adventure, will enjoy these three essays on Custer, the Titanic, and the onset of World War I. The book consists of rapier-like literary thrusts into the lives of General George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Andrews (the builder of the Titanic), and Edward Grey (British Foreign Secretary before World War I). However spectacular their failures, it's generally agreed that these men (or, in the case of Edward Grey, the men around them) could have avoided disaster except for arrogance -- a flaw that has long characterised the imperial ambition of leaders from both countries. One shudders to think where such a mentality will take us in a nuclear age. Schlesser's readable study is more than entertainment or scholarship, it is a plea for balance, probity, and reason in an era when a single fit of arrogance by a world leader can devastate hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and imperil the very project of civilised human existence on this planet. It's difficult to overstate the importance of this unassuming book. Essays on the problem of pride and avoidable failure.

A collection of stories that depict Westerners encountering Africa -- its people, its mysteries, its beauty and bafflements. Often those encounters change the Westerners, leading some to wisdom, others to heartache. The stories take the reader from the heart of the Congo to modern Madagascar, from a village in Nairobi to the mountain-top palace of the Mwami of Kabare, from a train in South Africa to a dinner party in Ouagadougou. Journalists, diplomats, and teachers experience the problems and fascinations of life in Africa.

This is a revolutionary phonics system for teaching children to read. It will also be effective in teaching reading to illiterate or semi-literate adults. The author is a reading expert who home-schooled her own seven children. She used every available phonics system, and found them all wanting. She realised that 30% of children are left behind by traditional phonics systems. She found that children are quick to use number clues to identify the different sounds of each letter. By tagging the letters with a number, she prompts the student to recall the specific sound of this letter. And she applies this system to all the 84 major sounds in English. Who should use Number Phonics? Home-schoolers. Parents who want to give their children a jump start. Parents whose children are struggling. Classroom teachers and reading specialists.

A middle-aged playwright -- in conflict with his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, and a legion of creditors -- journeys from Hollywood to Atlanta to work with his youthful idol, legendary avant-garde director Joseph Chaikin. Thus begins a roller coaster ride of a very unusual sort, combining personal revelations with theatrical obsessions, a step-by-step disclosure of a master director's rehearsal process with a search for spiritual truth (and a decent night's sleep). Just hop aboard and get a backstage pass to the 'holding-on-by-your-fingernails' reality of the contemporary American theatre.

In February 2001 Scott C. Davis flew to Damascus, attended raucous political salons, talked all night, and sat in local cafés debating the nature of the evolving Syrian nation. Such openness was new in Syria. Was it a sign of things to come? Would the Damascene Curtain fall as heavily and permanently as did the Berlin Wall? Would Damascus become another tourist trap bursting with American franchise restaurants, another Amman? To answer these questions, and to give a feel for the real country beneath the rapidly changing surfaces, Davis tells a story of an earlier time when Syrians did not discuss politics for fear of the 'mukhabarat' and when some hesitated, in their own homes, even to mention the name of the Syrian president. Fourteen years earlier, in October 1987, Davis had come to Damascus and begun a slow, difficult journey through Syrian society. He met artists and intellectuals, wealthy landowners, retired mystics, and also slept on the floor beside humble peasants and working folk. The times were quiet, jobs scarce, and ordinary folk could take a few moments for tea with a guest. Many of those Davis met took pride in their own simplicity. Denied political power and wealth, they aspired instead to wisdom -- or at least to perfecting a sardonic wit. This tale of grace, humour, and humanity turns on the author's search for truth and, also, for a few good quotes for his book -- a search that took him across Syria in the footsteps of Alexander to the ancient Roman Bridge over the Tigris River in the far eastern tip of the country -- and then brought him racing back to Damascus to find the Patriarch of Antioch.

Personal essays on the theme "local truth". Piquant, surprising, unpredictable prose from 75 of the finest emerging writers of the East and West Coasts. These men and women speak to particular subcultures and localities. Their words have sharp edges. Their thinking is strong, deeply felt, rooted-a welcome change from the pabulum that is produced for a mass audience. Learn of our future as is passes from the heat and passion of local discourse into national debate. Listen to men and women who, for all their individuality, share Cune's notion that literature, by its excellence as art tends to orient, heal, and uplift.

In February 2001 Scott C. Davis flew to Damascus, attended raucous political salons, talked all night, and sat in local cafés debating the nature of the evolving Syrian nation. Such openness was new in Syria. Was it a sign of things to come? Would the Damascene Curtain fall as heavily and permanently as did the Berlin Wall? Would Damascus become another tourist trap bursting with American franchise restaurants, another Amman? To answer these questions, and to give a feel for the real country beneath the rapidly changing surfaces, Davis tells a story of an earlier time when Syrians did not discuss politics for fear of the 'mukhabarat' and when some hesitated, in their own homes, even to mention the name of the Syrian president. Fourteen years earlier, in October 1987, Davis had come to Damascus and begun a slow, difficult journey through Syrian society. He met artists and intellectuals, wealthy landowners, retired mystics, and also slept on the floor beside humble peasants and working folk. The times were quiet, jobs scarce, and ordinary folk could take a few moments for tea with a guest. Many of those Davis met took pride in their own simplicity. Denied political power and wealth, they aspired instead to wisdom -- or at least to perfecting a sardonic wit. This tale of grace, humour, and humanity turns on the author's search for truth and, also, for a few good quotes for his book -- a search that took him across Syria in the footsteps of Alexander to the ancient Roman Bridge over the Tigris River in the far eastern tip of the country -- and then brought him racing back to Damascus to find the Patriarch of Antioch.

Farid Younes makes his home in Byblos, a coastal town in northern Lebanon. He lived through both the Lebanese and now the Syrian civil wars. Like all Lebanese, he has plenty of “serious” in his life. The need for him and other Lebanese is to find the distance needed to cope and if possible to move events and circumstances in a better direction. His answer was to create a book that is a literary imitation of a coffee house with an open mic like the famous “Haven—The Cabin” that rests on a Byblos hilltop looking out over the Mediterranean.The author's neighbors meditate over their chess boards or gather in a back corner spinning epic tales of conspiracy as a way of passing time before the next spoken word performance . . . and as a way of making sense of the carnage of war and strife beyond Lebanese borders and the women and children-Syrian refugees-who line the streets in the major cities.Nietzsche Awakens! is a game, yet it ultimately reaches past clever word play and the razor sharp slicing of meaning to depths that Nietzsche experienced in his own life, depths akin to those that Farid Younes has seen face-to-face among his fellow citizens.At a certain point, the parlor game of this book becomes a controlled yet also a thrashing, desperate effort to survive-for one's mind to survive against the ravages of age, and also for the culture as a whole to survive the inanity of rigid thinking, blatant self-dealing, and the other idiocies that prevent us from addressing the primary challenges of our time.

In White Carnations, the Syrian fiction writer Musa Rahum Abbas, revered in the Arab world, makes his English language debut with 101 tales that sketch life inside and outside Syria during the revolution that began in 2011.The prose in White Carnations is etched, distilled, essential. It recalls curious fables from distant foreign lands. Delicious vignettes and anecdotes are followed with the most absurd and horrific headlines of the Syrian revolution. Other tales document the furious efforts of non-poor Syrians who have escaped for a few weeks or forever. They are burrowing into superficially normal lives in the modern world. Yet their lives are not normal, because they are utterly unable to release the memories of pain and cruelty that they carry with them, like an emotional passport.Cune Press is presenting White Carnations as a companion to The Dusk Visitor. The scholar, translator, and creative writer Musa Al-Halool is the co-translator of White Carnations along with the delightful academic Sanna Dhahir. Note that Musa Al-Halool is the author of The Dusk Visitor.Both books are “light reading” on a serious subject. They explore through the tool of short fiction the fascist style that can slowly and decisively overtake democratic governments. (Yes, Syrian democracy emerged when the French left in 1946. After several years of free elections, an era of coup and counter-coup mixed with democratic maneuvering held sway as the Ba’ath Party gained strength. In 1963, the Ba’ath ousted Nazim Qudsi, considered the last democratically elected president of Syria).Whereas The Dusk Visitor’s commentary applies to several security state governments in North Africa and the Middle East, White Carnations focuses on the eruption of violence and displacement within a single country, Syria, and follows its expats as they struggle in exile.Both books hold lessons for readers who value an open civil society, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and democratic elections as a way to transfer power within democratic institutions.

This memoir is gentle, insightful, and spirited by turns. It offers glimpses of a lost fragment of Africa that has since been overcome by circumstance and conflict. Kivu still lives, but it lives now in memory.Amidst the chaos that followed independence from Belgium in 1960, Kivu was spared . . . and survived. It was a "little paradise" as strife and disorder drew ever nearer.Frederic Hunter sketches local characters, both whimsical and profound, probes the inanities of US Foreign Policy, and paints the darkness gathering beyond Kivu, forces that would inevitably overwhelm this quaint, quirky realm of hope and humanity.As a young Foreign Service officer, Frederic Hunter was assigned to the Congo in 1963, three years after independence. He expected to encounter heat, jungle, hardship, violence. Instead he found the Kivu, a kind of paradise, nestled among Rift Valley lakes. The climate was benign, the beauty extraordinary. It was peaceful, the people were splendid and got along. He lived in Bukavu, a town that occupied five peninsulas jutting into Lake Kivu. Furthermore, an African king lived atop the nearby green and often fog-bound mountains.This memoir lets you accompany these Kivu adventures. We get to know Hunter’s Number One Congolese colleague, a womanizing rogue. We meet local politicians who all attend a luncheon and discuss strategies for victory in the coming election—seemingly oblivious to the point that they were competing against one another for the post. There are expats: an American academic intoxicated by Africa, a missionary woman who has lost track of time. Hunter’s truck sank in a mud pit at night and he was soon surrounded by a herd of the most dangerous animals in Africa: hippos. Hunter risks more, however, when a local Kivu woman catches his eye and then steals his heart.

Alex Poppe’s characters celebrate the fragile grandeur of living an independent life in the aftermath of violence. Deeply rooted in place, these stories are about identity, hope, and redemption as fierce and flawed women rebuild their lives in the wake of war. The young women sparking through these pages are surprising, funny, and devastating: the essence of womanhood.The title piece, “Jinwar,” is a funny, yet heartbreaking story of an American woman who survived rape in the military, was denied due process, and found herself working in a food truck shaped like a hot dog during the Kavanaugh hearings.Her struggle to rebuild her life takes her across the globe to the Middle East, to Jinwar, an all-female village in Rojava, northeastern Syria. Here, survivors of war, patriarchy, and genocide un-make violence and search for ways to heal.Timely and prescient, Jinwar is a story for the #YesAllWoman world.

A collection of 36 short stories from a Raqqa, Syria native whose home was commandeered by ISIS and later destroyed by coalition airstrikes.Musa Al-Halool developed these stories based on a sense of embitterment toward the Syrian regime. Now, after his country has fallen from the grips of an obtuse and rigidly bureaucratic state into the uncertainties of war . . . he presents his stories as the response of one still-same voice in the midst of madness.Musa Al-Halool’s stories depict a Kafkaesque Middle Eastern world. The collection opens with eight political fables in a chapter titled Ratistan . . . or the country of Rats. These fables introduce themes which are picked up and developed in the later stories or simply serve as counterpoint to the longer pieces.The Dusk Visitor is an object lesson for Western readers. In just a few words, it invokes the warnings of Ernest Hemingway about the dangers of Fascism in 1920s Italy and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s . . . that resulted in WWII. The author shows in compelling detail that Middle East dictators and the upside down world of security state rule in the Middle East are the reward for functioning civil societies where a few too many ”good people” find it more convenient to collaborate rather than to resist.Western readers, in their arrogance, are accustomed to pity such dysfunctional societies. In The Dusk Visitor, the tables are turned. Musa Al-Halool forces us to look in the mirror: Middle Eastern style comical inanity and inefficiency as well as torture, mass murder, and other human rights horrors are just around the corner for the EU, UK, US, and other societies where it is OK to raise half-truths, lies, and exaggeration above traditional journalism, dilute the judiciary, gerrymander the election system, usher in strongmen who prefer to be rulers for life, and threaten legal action against one’s political opponents.The Dusk Visitor is a MUST-READ for anyone concerned about the growth of subtle and overt fascism within modern civil society.

Frederic Hunter takes us to Belgian Congo, portraying colonial administration of millions of Congolese and the uprising instigated by a healer who has broken no laws, yet directly challenges the authority of the ruling Belgian government. Governor-general Count Lippens must deal with this challenge and appease the ruling class in the Congo.

Girl Fighters is a novel based on a true account of two girls who passed as men and fought in Yemen’s 1960’s civil war.The characters in our story are two cousins who dress as males and are known as Mohammed and Ali. The men in their family have died in war. The girls feel it is their duty to seek revenge, the code of honor in tribal society. However in Yemen girls are hidden from public view—behind walls, doors, and veils. When Mohammed and Ali decide to seek revenge, they ironically violate another tribal expectation: that fighters be males.At first, Mohammed and Ali are inspired by their act of resistance. The war was compelling, a “noble cause.” Later, they come to realize that war benefits corrupt political leaders and business interests, both local and international. Against the backdrop of war they gain new perspectives. Taking off veils and dressing as men opens their eyes to gender inequities. They question female roles in tribal society. For example, boys can be educated at mosques, but girls cannot attend schools.Mohammed plans to open a girl’s school when the war ends. Ali is a military medic. When Ali is killed, Mohammed confronts loss and guilt. She cannot return to her former life. The dream of educating girls cannot happen as a “man.” In tribal society, as “a woman” she must marry and produce children. Against the odds, Mohammed reshapes her life as leader in the community.

Contemporary readers, who wonder at the British and American knack for misguided adventure, will enjoy these three essays on Custer, the Titanic, and the onset of World War I.The American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have finally wound down after incurring enormous costs. One wonders if we have forgotten the lessons of history, and in particular of World War I? It is far easier to enter into armed conflict than it is to withdraw the troops and heal the wounds.The Soldier, the Builder, and the Diplomat consists of rapier-like literary thrusts into the lives of General George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Andrews (the builder of the Titanic), and Edward Grey (British Foreign Secretary before World War I.However spectacular their failures, it's generally agreed that these men (or, in the case of Edward Grey, the men around him) could have avoided disaster except for arrogance - a flaw that has long characterized the imperial ambition of leaders from both countries.One shudders to think where such a mentality will take us in a nuclear age.Steven Schlesser's readable study is more than entertainment or scholarship, it is a plea for balance, probity, and reason in an era when a single fit of arrogance by a world leader can devastate hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and imperil the very project of civilized human existence on this planet.It's difficult to overstate the importance of The Soldier, the Builder, and the Diplomat.

Michael Haddad, the teenage son of Palestinian immigrants, comesof age during the tumultuous sixties in his family’s neighborhood grocery storein New York City.In 1967 Michael maneuvers through the working-class neighborhooddelivering groceries and enters the homes and lives of his customers. He’sconfronted by the violence of racist bullies and falls for the radical collegecoed who teaches him about sex, love, and protest. Michael grieves with themother whose only son died in the Vietnam War and is embraced by the firstblack couple who move into the neighborhood. They all shape him, and throughthe conflict of hate, acts of kindness, and his sexual awakening, Michaelstruggles to figure out who this dutiful son of an immigrant family is. Michael’s lifeis buffeted by the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the death, two monthslater, of Bobby Kennedy. His girlfriend opens his eyes to the ongoing struggle totest national ideals against the growing diversity of America. But when Michael experiences a sudden personal tragedy, he mustlearn to get past his fears, come to terms with his heritage, and set himselffree.

Linda Sartor takes us behind the headlines.  She hopes that her stories will inspire readers to confront fear, to follow their hearts, and to believe that ordinary people can ultimately undermine and reform the harsh imperial and economic systems that are too often accepted as a baseline "reality" when the nations of the world exercise power."I came back from Afghanistan in 2011 with 70 pages of notes and no clarity about demanding US withdrawal." In the wake of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, Linda Sartor was dismayed to see her country responding in ways that punish civilians in foreign lands, lending credibility to Al Qaeda's depiction of the US as an imperial state and an enemy of Islam.For the next decade Linda engaged in self-styled citizen diplomacy, traveling to six war-torn countries to see for herself, and to do what she could to provide unarmed civilian protective support to locals in their efforts to attain peace and justice.Besides Afghanistan, Linda traveled to Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Iran, and Bahrain with several different Peace and Justice organizations.

Melody Sullivan is falling apart after the death of her mother. The 16-year-old pours her cynicism and grief into poetry and an intense relationship with her powerhouse best friend, Yasmina Khdour. When Melody’s father drags her to an overseas archeology conference in Jerusalem, she is left to wander alone. Hanging out on a Tel Aviv beach, smoking dope with her Israeli cousins and their army buddies, sounds like fun until she is sexually assaulted by a friend of her cousin. She cannot share this devastating truth with her emotionally distant dad and impulsively flees to Hebron where Yasmina is visiting her family. As a Palestinian, Yasmina is unable to enter Jerusalem. Melody’s only other source of solace is Aaron Shapiro, a shy, religious boy back home with an awkward crush on her, but Aaron’s anxious texts make it clear he believes she’s wandering into enemy territory. This is a story about trauma and taking emotional risks, about facing internal demons and the external realities of war and occupation, about finding oneself in the most unexpected places.

Muslims, Arabs, and Arab-Americans is based on Author Nawar Shora's time-tested seminar program that has reached law enforcement, the intelligence community, church groups, academic institutions, and private corporations for the past two decades.  His combinations of quick-witted humor and approachable simple methods to explain complex and often intimidating topics have made him a nationally recognized authority on Muslims, Arabs, and Arab-Americans. The book with its new title is the third edition of what was The Arab American Handbook and has been updated with additional information, anecdotes, and examples. This non-politicized book is perfect for anyone interested in learning more about the people, culture, faiths, geography, and social and behavioral norms and mores of Muslim and Arab people.  The book will help everyone from novices on the topic, to experienced academics who are curious to achieve greater understanding of these cultures.  Shora's formula has remained the same for decades:  Communication + Understanding = Trust.  If we can truly understand one another, if we know how to effectively communicate, then real and genuine trust will bloom organically.  Once trust is achieved, anything is possible.

Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo—magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of a Knight Errant, before their escapades in that story. These stories are told in the tradition of A Thousand and One Nights.