Middle East

The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power by Sean McMeekin, Belknap Press, 2021.

The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response  by Peter Balakian, Harper Collins, 2003.  The Ottoman Empire This book describes the efforts of the Ottoman Empire to ethnically cleanse Turkey of non-Turks and non-Muslims. This mainly applied to the original inhabitants of Anatolia: the Greeks, the Armenians and the Assyrian Christians. Armenians and all other Christians (and Jews) were dhimmis, second-class citizens under Muslim rule. Dhimmis had to pay a ta

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State  by Nadia Murad, with Jenna Krajeski; Foreword by Amal Clooney; Tim Duggan Books (Crown) (2017)  Jihadist Attitude Towards Women This is a memoir of a young Yazidi woman who was kidnapped during the time that jihadist Sunni Arabs took over the northern part of Iraq where the Kurds and Yazidis live. Unlike mainstream Muslims, jihadists believe that if a woman is unmarried and not a Muslim, they any Mu

Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty-year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion and Collective Memory in the Middle East  by Kim Ghattas, Henry Holt, 2021.  Shia Muslims In the 1970s and 1980s, there were several political groups involved with Lebanon and Iran: Amal Movement (Lebanon) Liberation Movement of Iran Islamic Republican Party National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps  Amal Amal was a political group in Lebanon which

The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice  by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Penguin Books, 2021. The Kurds are a nationless people split across 4 countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. There are many Kurds in northeastern Syria. This book is about how Kurdish women in Syria formed Kurdish Women Protection Units to fight the Sunni jihadists. Many of them were from the Kurdish city of Kobani, in the north, near the border with Turkey. They fought for both Ku

The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust  by Edwin Black, Dialog Press, 2012.  The Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire of Sultan Abdulhamid II included the oil-rich province of Mosul in present-day Iraq. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany in World War I. To develop their oil wealth, the Turks first turned to Germany’s Deutsche Bank. Great Britain and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company tried to steal these oil rights away from Deutsche Bank.  Sykes-Picot Ag

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization  by Paul Kriwaczek, St. Martin's Griffin, 2012.  Summary This book is a history of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The author describes the first cities in the world, founded by the Sumerians.  He continues the story forward to include the Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians. He also mentions the Elamites who lived to the east, in Iran, and the Hurrians, who lived to the north.  Sumeri

Because They Hate  by Brigitte Gabriel, St. Martin's Press, 2006.  A Christian in Lebanon Brigitte Gabriel tells her story of growing up as a Christian Arab in Lebanon during their civil war. Lebanon received waves of Palestinian refugees after the founding of Israel and again after the Six-Day War. When King Hussein of Jordan expelled the Palestinians from Jordan in 1970, Lebanon was the only Arab country that was willing to accept them. The Palestinians repaid this generos

Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror  by Nonie Darwish, Sentinel HC, 2006.  Nonie Darwish was born in Cairo. Her father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, served in the Egyptian army in Gaza. Darwish went to elementary school in Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from entering the rest of Egypt, even though Gaza was part of Egypt. Egypt intentionally kept the Palestinians in Gaza in poverty, in order to make Israel look ba

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda  by Yaroslav Trofimov, Anchor, 2008.  Saudi Royal Family During the second half of the twentieth century, the Saudi royal family developed some liberalizing trends: the outlawing of slavery in 1962, tolerance of Shias living in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula, the importation of foreign infidels to work in the oil industry, alcohol, cigarettes, television and cinemas showi

Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism  by Dore Gold, Regnery Publishing, 2003.  Wahhabism Dore Gold describes the origin of Wahhabism. The founder of Wahhabi Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, lived in the early 18th century in a village a little north of Riyadh on the Najd plateau. At that time, there was mutual respect between the four schools of Suni Islam (Shafii, Hanbali, Hanafi, Malaki). Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab changed that. He declared t

Lawrence in Arabia  by Scott Anderson, Doubleday Paperback, 2013.  Archaeologist T. E. Lawrence was an archaeologist by profession. When working in the Middle East before World War I, he learned Arabic and also much about the Arabs. When World War I started, he became an officer in the British army. He understood the situation on the ground better than any of the British career officers in the Middle East. Although some of the British diplomats and army officers saw him as a