Thinking through anti, post, and decolonial theories, this book examines, analyses, and conceptualises 'visibly Muslim' Lebanese women's lived experiences of discrimination, assault, wounding, and erasure. Based on in-depth research alongside over 100 Sunni and Shia participant between 2017 and 2019 it situates these experiences at the intersection of the local and the global and argues for their conceptualisation as a form of structural and lived anti-Muslim racism. In doing this, it discusses the convergences and divergences of anti-Muslim racism in Lebanon with anti-Muslim racism in other parts of both the global north and the global south. It examines the production of this racialisation as well as its workings across spheres of public, private, work, and state - including an analysis of internalised self-hate. It further explores various forms of resistance and negotiation and the contemporary possibilities and impossibilities of working beyond the epistemic framework of Eurocentric modernity. As the first in-depth and extensive study of anti-Muslim racism within Muslim-majority and Arab-majority spaces, it offers an urgent and timely redress to multiple gaps and biases in the study of the Muslim-majority and Arab-majority worlds as well as racialisation broadly and Islamophobia specifically.

Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a twenty-two-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution-the first of its kind in the Middle East-led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament. The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers. "The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth," Baskerville declared, "and that is not a big difference." In 1909, Baskerville was killed in battle alongside his students, but his martyrdom spurred on the revolutionaries who succeeded in removing the shah from power, signing a new constitution, and rebuilding parliament in Tehran. To this day, Baskerville's tomb in the city of Tabriz remains a place of pilgrimage. Every year, thousands of Iranians visit his grave to honor the American who gave his life for Iran. In this rip-roaring tale of his life and death, Aslan gives us a powerful parable about the universal ideals of democracy-and to what degree Americans are willing to support those ideals in a foreign land. Woven throughout is an essential history of the nation we now know as Iran-frequently demonized and misunderstood in the West. Indeed, Baskerville's life and death represent a "road not taken" in Iran. Baskerville's story, like his life, is at the center of a whirlwind in which Americans must ask themselves: How seriously do we take our ideals of constitutional democracy and whose freedom do we support?

While a positive correlation between capitalism and democracy has existed in Western Europe and North America, the example of late-industrializing nations such as Turkey has demonstrated that the two need not always go hand in hand, and sometimes the interests of business coincide more firmly with anti-democratic forces. This book explores the factors that compelled capitalists in Turkey to adopt a more pro-democratic ideology by examining a leading Turkish business lobby (TUESIAD) which has been pushing for democratic reform since the 1990s, despite representing some of the largest corporation owners in Turkey and having supported the state's authoritarian tendencies in the past such as the military coup of 1980. Drawing on roughly 70 interviews with influential members of TUESIAD and individuals close to them, the book reveals that business leaders were willing to break away from the state due to the conflict between their evolving economic needs and power with a political elite and state that were unwilling to cater to their demands. In so doing, the book provides a rich account of business-state relations in Turkey as well as providing a case study for the wider study of democracy and capitalism in developing nations.

The importance of the region that is recognised today as Saudi Arabia (with its neighbours) can hardly be underestimated, let alone overlooked by the rest of the world, not merely because of its geographical location and religious significance to a large segment of the world's population due to the location of Islam's two holiest shrines in Makkah and al-Madinah, and for economic and political reasons too, for it has the world's largest known reserves of energy. This book attempts to trace and explain the rise, fall - then rise and fall again - and rise of the Saudi polity in the Arabian Peninsula, and explores the role played throughout these evengts by Shaykh Muhammad bin Abdal-Wahhab and his 'Call' for religious and social reform. Not since the writings of Philby five decades ago has a book exploring the history of such a politically important and sensitive region, and in such a comprehensive and academic manner, appeared on the scene. Supported by maps and illustrations, and written by an insider who has resided in the Kingdom for over four decades, the book is a fascinating eye-opener and historical reference, bringing almost all the known original indigenous Arabic and other source material into full purview.

The six-month siege of Khe Sanh in 1968 was the largest, most intense battle of the Vietnam War. For six thousand trapped U.S. Marines, it was a nightmare; for President Johnson, an obsession. For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of technological weaponry; for General Giap, architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops moving south for the Tet offensive. With a new introduction by Mark Bowden-best-selling author of Hu? 1968-Robert Pisor's immersive narrative of the action at Khe Sanh is a timely reminder of the human cost of war, and a visceral portrait of Vietnam's fiercest and most epic close-quarters battle. Readers may find the politics and the tactics of the Vietnam War, as they played out at Khe Sahn fifty years ago, echoed in our nation's global incursions today. Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies, and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the turning point of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

In a gripping, moment-by-moment narrative based on a wealth of recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin tell the remarkable drama that unfolded over the final, heroic hours of the Vietnam War. This closing chapter of the war would become the largest-scale evacuation ever carried out, as improvised by a small unit of Marines, a vast fleet of helicopter pilots flying nonstop missions beyond regulation, and a Marine general who vowed to arrest any officer who ordered his choppers grounded while his men were still on the ground.
Drury and Clavin focus on the story of the eleven young Marines who were the last men to leave, rescued from the U.S. Embassy roof just moments before capture, having voted to make an Alamo-like last stand. As politicians in Washington struggled to put the best face on disaster and the American ambassador refused to acknowledge that the end had come, these courageous men held their ground and helped save thousands of lives. Drury and Clavin deliver a taut and stirring account of a turning point in American history that unfolds with the heartstopping urgency of the best thrillers--a riveting true story finally told, in full, by those who lived it.

What role does Qatar play in the Middle East, and how does it differ from the other Gulf states? How has the ruling Al-Thani family shaped Qatar from a traditional tribal society and British protectorate to a modern state? How has Qatar become an economic superpower with one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world? What are the social, political, and economic consequences of Qatar's extremely rapid development? In this groundbreaking history of modern Qatar, Allen J. Fromherz analyzes the country's crucial role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a broader historical context. Drawing on original sources in Arabic, English, and French as well as his own fieldwork in the Middle East, the author deftly traces the influence of the Ottoman and British Empires and Qatar's Gulf neighbors prior to Qatar's meteoric rise in the post-independence era. Fromherz gives particular weight to the nation's economic and social history, from its modest origins in the pearling and fishing industries to the considerable economic clout it exerts today, a clout that comes from having the region's second-highest natural gas reserves. He also looks at what the future holds for Qatar's economy as the country tries to diversify beyond oil and gas. The book further examines the paradox of Qatar where monarchy, traditional tribal culture, and conservative Islamic values appear to coexist with ultramodern development and a large population of foreign workers who outnumber Qatari citizens. This book is as unique as the country it documents-a multifaceted picture of the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic makeup of modern Qatar and its significance within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the wider region.

Nahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere; because Nahr is not going to share her story with them.

The world outside calls Nahr a terrorist, and a whore; some might call her a revolutionary, or a hero. But the truth is, Nahr has always been many things, and had many names. She was a girl who learned, early and painfully, that when you are a second class citizen love is a kind of desperation; she learned, above all else, to survive. She was a girl who went to Palestine in the wrong shoes, and without looking for it found what she had always lacked in the basement of a battered beauty parlour: purpose, politics, friends. She found a dark-eyed man called Bilal, who taught her to resist; who tried to save her when it was already too late.

Nahr sits in the Cube, and tells her story to Bilal. Bilal, who isn't there; Bilal, who may not even be alive, but who is her only reason to get out.

How did the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution affect everyone's lives? Why did people re/negotiate their identities to adopt revolutionary roles and duties? How did people, who lived with different self-understandings and social relations, inevitably acquire and practice revolutionary identities, each in their own light?This book plunges into the contexts of these concerns to seek different relations that reveal the Revolution's different meanings. Furthermore, this book shows that scholars of the Cultural Revolution encountered emotional and intellectual challenges as they cared about the real people who owned an identity resource that could trigger an imagined thread of solidarity in their minds.The authors believe that the Revolution's magnitude and pervasive scope always resulted in individualized engagements that have significant and differing consequences for those struggling in their micro-context. It has impacted a future with unpredictable collective implications in terms of ethnicity, gender, memory, scholarship, or career. The Cultural Revolution is, therefore, an evolving relation beneath the rise of China that will neither fade away nor sanction integrative paths.

Iran and a French Empire of Trade examines the understudied topic of Franco-Persian relations in the long eighteenth century to highlight how rising tensions among Eurasian empires and revolutions in the Atlantic world were profoundly intertwined. Conflicts between Persia, Turkey, India and Russia, and European weapons-dealing with these empires occurred against a backdrop of climate change and food insecurities that destabilized markets. Takeda shows how the French state relied on "entrepreneurial imperialism" to extend commercial activities eastwards beyond the Mediterranean during this time, from Louis XIV's reign to Napoleon Bonaparte's First Empire. Organized as a collection of microhistories, her study showcases a colourful set of characters-rogue merchants from Marseille, a gambling house madam, a naturalized Greek-French drogman, and a bi-cultural Genevan-Persian consul, among others-to demonstrate how individuals on the fringes of French society spearheaded projects to foster ties between France and Persia. Considering the Enlightenment as a product of a connected world, Takeda investigates how trans-imperial adventurers, merchants, consuls, and informants negotiated treaties, traded commodities and arms, transferred knowledge, and introduced industrial practices from Asia to Europe. And she shows the surprising ways in which Enlightenment debates about regime changes from the Safavid to Qajar dynasties and Persia's borderland wars shaped French ideas about revolution and policies related to empire-building.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize 'Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict ' Noam Chomsky The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba - the Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel - the cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments, Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation, dispossession and colonialisation.