Ruby Sisson Library

In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, has drawn on his decade in the Middle East to produce the most trenchant, vivid, and thought-provoking book yet on the region. No issue in international politics has been more hotly debated than the Arab-Israeli conflict. And no reporter has illuminated both the conflict and the rhythms of life in the Middle East with more immediacy and brilliance...

"Every Man in This Village Is a Liar" is LA Times reporter Megan K. Stack's riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones of the Middle East, in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan, and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy.

The author describes his journey through places mentioned in the Old Testament.

Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history:...

Author recounts his travels through thirteen Muslim countries in the Middle East: the ordinary people, the conflicts, and the land.

"David Roberts was born in 1796 at Stockbridge, near Edinburgh, to an extremely humble family. He spent his childhood in total but dignified poverty, which did nothing to prevent him, however, from showing early but remarkable artistic gifts. Gifted with great determination and equal talents, Roberts succeeded in overcoming his humble beginnings, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed artists of the period. An excellent landscape artist, after...

The humorist offers a survey of the foibles of American foreign policy, recounting his experiences among consumers in Kuwait, in security-obsessed airports around the globe, and in Kosovo

Almost no one agrees on who came to that stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, how many came, where they came from, whether they were sages or kings, and what they gave to that special child. The Gospels don't agree, and neither do any other sources written within a hundred years of the birth of Jesus. Unraveling that mystery not only sent Roberts on an adventure in the footsteps of the Magi that took him from Tehran to Bethlehem, but revealed...

Michael Kelly is an acute and entertaining witness. He traveled through much of the Middle East during and after the Gulf War, watching the bombs fall on Baghdad and waiting for Scuds in Tel Aviv, inspecting the gold bathroom fixtures installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the emir's temporary palace in Kuwait City and dining with Kurdish chieftains in remote mountain camps in northern Iran. When the ground war began, Kelly rented a four-wheel-drive...