The Gate of Baghdad: An Agatha Christie Short Story

The Gate of Baghdad: An Agatha Christie Short Story PDF Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007452136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.

The Gate of Baghdad: An Agatha Christie Short Story

The Gate of Baghdad: An Agatha Christie Short Story PDF Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007452136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Get Book Here

Book Description
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.

The Gate of Baghdad

The Gate of Baghdad PDF Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062129805
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Just as boredom is setting in on his long trip by motor coach across the desert to Baghdad, Mr. Parker Pyne reads about the case of the missing Mr. Long, the famous defaulting financier who, as the papers would have it, is in South America. Another member of his party, Captain Smethurst, tells Pyne that he is worried about something. But before he can tell Pyne what it is, he is found dead, with no visible wound. Pyne must piece together what happened from various clues, including scraps of conversation overheard back in Damascus.

The Assassins' Gate

The Assassins' Gate PDF Author: George Packer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374705321
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, TheSan Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, USA Today, Time, and New York magazine. Winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs Winner of the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate—the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The Assassins' Gate also describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.

Parker Pyne Investigates

Parker Pyne Investigates PDF Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062006711
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Agatha Christie once again demonstrates her mastery of the short form mystery with Parker Pyne Investigates—short stories of crime and detection featuring Parker Pyne, certainly one of the most unconventional private investigators ever to pursue a hot lead. Mrs. Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in the Times that read: "Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne." Equally adept at putting together the fragments of a murder mystery or the pieces of a broken marriage, Mr. Parker Pyne is possibly the world's most unconventional private investigator. Armed with just his intuitive knowledge of human nature, he is an Englishman abroad, traveling the globe to solve and undo crime and misdemeanor.

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
This curious time-travel novella is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate-or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah. A Baghdad merchant discovers an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. Despite the alchemist's warning that "what is made cannot be unmade," and three illustrative tales about others' attempts to alter the past, the merchant is determined to return to an earlier time to save his long-dead wife

Baghdad During the Abbasid Caliphate

Baghdad During the Abbasid Caliphate PDF Author: Guy Le Strange
Publisher: Oxford, Clarendon Press
ISBN:
Category : Baghdad (Iraq)
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description


Babylon's Ark

Babylon's Ark PDF Author: Lawrence Anthony
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429981431
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The astonishing story of the soldiers, conservationists, and ordinary Iraqis who united to save the animals of the Baghdad Zoo When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, he defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed palaces for desperately needed supplies. Babylon's Ark chronicles Anthony's hair-raising efforts to save a pride of Saddam's lions, close a deplorable black-market zoo, run ostriches through shoot-to-kill checkpoints, and rescue the dictator's personal herd of Thoroughbred Arabian horses. A tale of the selfless courage and humanity of a few men and women living dangerously for all the right reasons, Babylon's Ark is an inspiring and uplifting true-life adventure of individuals on both sides working together for the sake of magnificent wildlife caught in a war zone.

The Caliph's Splendor

The Caliph's Splendor PDF Author: Benson Bobrick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416568069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The Caliph’s Splendor is a revelation: a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture. While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph’s Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun’s rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne. When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun’s court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature. But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun’s caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire. Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.

Black Butterflies Over Baghdad

Black Butterflies Over Baghdad PDF Author: David Allen Sullivan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944585488
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Chosen by Tim Seibles for The Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Brian Turner says Sullivan "listens across cultures and across languages in order to undo the erasures of time and power," calling this "a book of compassion and deep humanity." Poems spring from inspirations as various as paintings by Iraqi painters, the voices of Iraqi poets, co-translation projects with poets living there or in exile, and daily life in Iraq itself. Co-translations comprise one section of the collection and give a priceless cross-section of Iraqi poets today. Says Seibles: "David Allen Sullivan gives us an intimate tour of war-torn Iraq, an intricate look at the minds of people for whom military violence had become a defining part of daily life. Because these figures speak with such authority and desperation, reading this collection disrupts and deepens the way we, who have not lived with war, perceive its terrible damage. The poems are at times poignantly lyrical and in other moments darkly magical--as if the reader has somehow entered the poet's more than real dreamscape. I don't know if art can save us from self-annihilation, but to echo Muriel Rukeyser slightly: David Allen Sullivan's poetry is the kind of thing that might help us back away from the brink." Lola Haskins adds: "Sullivan's book left me in a state of shock and awe: shocked by the terrible sufferings of the Iraqi people, and awed by the high and heart-breaking grace of the survivors who present them. For me, the most resonant word in the poems is 'blood,' not because it's so often used, but because of its double meanings: the literal--the substance in all our veins that's essential to life, and the figurative--'family,' which is the heart the whole collection wears on its metaphoric sleeve: that we are all, wherever we come from, family." Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies.

The Spymaster of Baghdad

The Spymaster of Baghdad PDF Author: Margaret Coker
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062947435
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
From the former New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad comes the gripping and heroic story of an elite, top-secret team of unlikely spies who triumphed over ISIS. The Spymaster of Baghdad tells the dramatic yet intimate account of how a covert Iraqi intelligence unit called “the Falcons” came together against all odds to defeat ISIS. The Falcons, comprising ordinary men with little conventional espionage background, infiltrated the world’s most powerful terrorist organization, ultimately turning the tide of war against the terrorist group and bringing safety to millions of Iraqis and the broader world. Centered around the relationship between two brothers, Harith al-Sudani, a rudderless college dropout who was recruited to the Falcons by his all-star younger brother Munaf, and their eponymous unit commander Abu Ali, The Spymaster of Baghdad follows their emotional journey as Harith volunteers for the most dangerous mission imaginable. With piercing lyricism and thrilling prose, Coker’s deeply-reported account interweaves heartfelt portraits of these and other unforgettable characters as they navigate the streets of war-torn Baghdad and perform heroic feats of cunning and courage. The Falcons’ path crosses with that of Abrar, a young, radicalized university student who, after being snubbed by the head of the Islamic State’s chemical weapons program, plots her own attack. At the near-final moment, the Falcons intercept Abrar’s deadly plan to poison Baghdad’s drinking water and arrest her in the middle of the night—just one of many covert counterterrorism operations revealed for the first time in the book. Ultimately, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a page-turning account of wartime espionage in which ordinary people make extraordinary sacrifices for the greater good. Challenging our perceptions of terrorism and counterterrorism, war and peace, Iraq and the wider Middle East, American occupation and foreign intervention, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a testament to the power of personal choice and individual action to change the course of history—in a time when we need such stories more than ever.