The first English-language biography of the de facto ruler of the late Ottoman Empire and architect of the Armenian Genocide, Talaat Pasha (1874-1921) led the triumvirate that ruled the late Ottoman Empire during World War I and is arguably the father of...

In the months following its initial release, Guantánamo: What the World Should Know has proved to be a disturbingly accurate account of the Bush administration's tangle with civil liberties and torture. Written by Michael Ratner (Center for...

A compelling history of the ancient schism that continues to divide the Islamic worldWhen Muhammad died in 632 without a male heir, Sunnis contended that the choice of a successor should fall to his closest companions, but Shi'a believed that God had...

In this book, Patricia Blessing explores the emergence of Ottoman architecture in the fifteenth century and its connection with broader geographical contexts. Analyzing how transregional exchange shaped building practices, she examines how workers from...

What worlds take root in war? In this book, anthropologist Munira Khayyat describes life along the southern border of Lebanon, where resistant ecologies thrive amid a terrain of perennial war. A Landscape of War takes us to frontline villages where armed...

Powerful ideas of protest and freedom of expression from the world-renowned Egyptian political prisoner and activist collected in English for the first time. With a foreword by Naomi Klein."The text you are holding is living history." — Naomi Klein, from...

""Alternative Iran" offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic,...

This #1 New York Times best seller remains the most informative and objective account of the Taliban available This modern classic brings the shadowy world of the Taliban and its impact on Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Central Asia into sharp focus...

Since the 1970s, the Egyptian state has embarked on a far-reaching and destabilizing project of economic liberalization, reneging on its commitments to social welfare. Despite widespread socioeconomic grievances stemming from these policies, class...

Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mizane of southern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of their submission to the divine. After this sober ceremony comes a bacchanalian masquerade which...

Explores how writers, filmmakers and artists have attempted to reckon with the legacy of a devastating warThe Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. The memory of it may have faded in the wake of more recent wars in the...

For more than thirty years Hafez al-Asad has ruled Syria with an iron fist. Six U.S. presidents and eight Israeli prime ministers have come and gone, but Asad remains, one of the last of the old generation of Arab leaders. But in the post-Cold War Middle...

In this engaging first memoir, George A. Kiraz tells the story of a young Palestinian boy growing up in Bethlehem, fascinated with understanding his Syriac roots even as he drew steadily nearer to the day when he would inevitably be transplanted to the...

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests examines the impact of the Persian Sasanian context on the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. What impact did the Persian Zoroastrian Empire, as both a real historical...

An incisive account of Erdoğan’s Turkey—showing how its troubling transformation may be short-livedSince coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has...

Insights into power, spectacle, and performance in the courts of Middle Eastern rulersIn recent decades, scholars have produced much new research on courtly life in medieval Europe, but studies on imperial and royal courts across the Middle East have...

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Written by recipients of the John Freely Fellowship awarded annually through the American Research Institute in Turkey from a major gift from the Joukowsky Family Foundation of New York to honor a celebrated author of travel and history books, this...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceWhy the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrongThe Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either...