Restless Valley

Restless Valley PDF Author: Philip Shishkin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300185987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This award-winning foreign correspondent’s vivid account of Central Asia’s recent history “reads like a novel but is the stuff of hard-won journalism” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan). Here are the stories of two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains, heroes, or possibly both. Restless Valley is a gripping, contemporary chronicle of Central Asia from a veteran journalist with extensive experience in the region. Both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have struggled with the challenges of post-Soviet, independent statehood, and both became entangled in America’s Afghan campaign when the United States built military bases within their borders. Meanwhile, the region was becoming a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan’s booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants—the powerful and the powerless—Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings; how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings; and how Stalin’s legacy of ethnic gerrymandering continues to incite conflict today. “The weird, the strange, the corrupt, and the grand are all evident . . . [Shishkin] relentlessly pursues and then tells the stories of the most corrupt and powerful and also the most sincere and admirable characters who inhabit these mountains.” —Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books

Restless Valley

Restless Valley PDF Author: Philip Shishkin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300185987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
This award-winning foreign correspondent’s vivid account of Central Asia’s recent history “reads like a novel but is the stuff of hard-won journalism” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan). Here are the stories of two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains, heroes, or possibly both. Restless Valley is a gripping, contemporary chronicle of Central Asia from a veteran journalist with extensive experience in the region. Both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have struggled with the challenges of post-Soviet, independent statehood, and both became entangled in America’s Afghan campaign when the United States built military bases within their borders. Meanwhile, the region was becoming a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan’s booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants—the powerful and the powerless—Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings; how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings; and how Stalin’s legacy of ethnic gerrymandering continues to incite conflict today. “The weird, the strange, the corrupt, and the grand are all evident . . . [Shishkin] relentlessly pursues and then tells the stories of the most corrupt and powerful and also the most sincere and admirable characters who inhabit these mountains.” —Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books

Intrigue and Revolution

Intrigue and Revolution PDF Author: Yaron Harel
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1789624878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Yaron Harel has constructed a dramatic story of how eleven chief rabbis all became the subject of controversy and were subsequently dismissed. This took place against a background of crime and licentiousness rarely documented in the context of Jewish society. Set firmly in the social and political developments of the time, this colourful picture is very different from the commonly accepted image of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire.

Intrigue and Revolution

Intrigue and Revolution PDF Author: Yaron Harel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781800340237
Category : Chief Rabbinate
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This is a work of unexpected drama: all eleven chief rabbis appointed in this period of unprecedented change in the Jewish communities of the Fertile Crescent became the subject of controversy and were subsequently dismissed. This took place against a background of events rarely discussed in the context of Jewish society. The text paints a colourful picture of these upheavals set firmly in the social and political context of the time and far removed from the commonly accepted image of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire.

Mao's Last Revolution

Mao's Last Revolution PDF Author: Roderick MACFARQUHAR
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.

Heavenly Intrigue

Heavenly Intrigue PDF Author: Joshua Gilder
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400031761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Heavenly Intrigue is the fascinating, true account of the seventeenth-century collaboration between Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe that revolutionized our understanding of the universe–and ended in murder.One of history’s greatest geniuses, Kepler laid the foundations of modern physics with his revolutionary laws of planetary motion. But his beautiful mind was beset by demons. Born into poverty and abuse, half-blinded by smallpox, he festered with rage, resentment, and a longing for worldly fame. Brahe, his mentor, was a flamboyant aristocrat who had spent forty years mapping the heavens with unprecedented accuracy–but he refused to share his data with Kepler. With Brahe’s untimely death in Prague in 1601, rumors flew across Europe that he had been murdered. But it took twentieth-century forensics to uncover the poison in his remains, and the detective work of Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder to identify the prime suspect–the ambitious, envy-ridden Kepler himself. A fast-paced, true-life account that reads like a thriller, Heavenly Intrigue is a remarkable feat of historical re-creation.

Cuba in Revolution

Cuba in Revolution PDF Author: Miguel A. Faria
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description


Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840-1880

Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840-1880 PDF Author: Yaron Harel
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1909821071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This pioneering study offers a comprehensive account of Syria's key Jewish communities at an important juncture in their history that also throws light on the broader effects of modernization in the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman reforms of the mid-nineteenth century accelerated the process of opening up Syria up to European travellers and traders, and gave Syria's Jews access to European Jewish communities. The resulting influx of Western ideas led to a decline in the traditional economy, with serious consequences for the Jewish occupational structure. It also allowed for the introduction of Western education, through schools run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, influenced the structure and the administration of Jewish society in Syria, and changed the balance of the relationship between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Initially Syria's Jewish communities flourished economically and politically in these new circumstances, but there was a developing recognition that their future lay overseas. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the bankruptcy of the Ottoman empire in 1875, and the suspension of the Ottoman constitution in 1878, this feeling intensified. A process of decline set in that ultimately culminated in large-scale Jewish emigration, first to Egypt and then to the West. From that point on, the future for Syrian Jews lay in the West, not the East. Detailed and compelling, this book covers Jewish community life, the legal status of Jews in Syria, their relationship with their Muslim and Christian neighbours, and their links with the West. It draws on a wide range of archival material in six languages, including Jewish, Christian Arab, and Muslim Arab sources, Ottoman and European documents, consular reports, travel accounts, and reports from the contemporary press and by emissaries to Syria of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Rabbinic sources, including the archive of the chief rabbinate in Istanbul, are particularly important in opening a window onto Syrian Jewish life and concerns. Together these sources bring to light an enormous amount of material and provide a broad, multifaceted perspective on the Syrian Jewish community. The Hebrew edition of the book was the winner of the Ben Zvi Award for Research in Oriental Jewry in 2004. ‘For the first time in the historiography of the Jews of Muslim countries we are presented with a rich picture, well written and riveting, of the history of important Jewish communities in the period of the Tanzimat.’ From the award citation

Sovay

Sovay PDF Author: Celia Rees
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1599905736
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
In 1794 England, the beautiful Sovay dons a man's cloak and holds up stagecoaches in broad daylight. Posing as a highway robber began as a lark to test a suitor's devotion. But when she lifts the wallet of one of England's most dangerous men, Sovay begins to unravel a web of deceit and duplicity. Acclaimed author Celia Rees' talent for romance and intrigue are sure to thrill a paperback audience.

Imager's Intrigue

Imager's Intrigue PDF Author: L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429992417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The Imager Porfolio is a bestselling and innovative epic fantasy series from L. E. Modesitt, Jr. that RT Book Reviews says “shines with engrossing characters, terrific plotting, and realistic world-building.” Continue the journey with Imager's Intrigue. Rhenn has a wife and a young child, and a solid career as an imager. But he has made more than one enemy during his journey from apprentice painter to master imager, and even his great powers won't allow him to escape his past. The Imager Portfolio #1 Imager / #2 Imager’s Challenge / #3 Imager’s Intrigue / #4 Scholar / #5 Princeps / #6 Imager’s Battalion / #7 Antiagon Fire / #8 Rex Regis / #9 Madness in Solidar / #10 Treachery’s Tools / #11 Assassin’s Price/#12 Endgames Other series by this author: The Saga of Recluce The Corean Chronicles The Spellsong Cycle The Ghost Books The Ecolitan Matter At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Liberation Square

Liberation Square PDF Author: Ashraf Khalil
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429962445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A definitive, absorbing account of the Egyptian revolution, written by a Cairo-based Egyptian-American reporter for Foreign Policy and The Times (London), who witnessed firsthand Mubarak's demise and the country's efforts to build a democracy In early 2011, the world's attention was riveted on Cairo, where after three decades of supremacy, Hosni Mubarak was driven from power. It was a revolution as swift as it was explosive. For eighteen days, anger, defiance, and resurgent national pride reigned in the streets---protestors of all ages struck back against police and state security, united toward the common goal of liberation. But the revolution was more than a spontaneous uprising. It was the end result of years of mounting tension, brought on by a state that shamelessly abused its authority, rigging elections, silencing opposition, and violently attacking its citizens. When revolution bloomed in the region in January 2011, Egypt was a country whose patience had expired---with a people suddenly primed for liberation. As a journalist based in Cairo, Ashraf Khalil was an eyewitness to the perfect storm that brought down Mubarak and his regime. Khalil was subjected to tear gas alongside protestors in Tahrir Square, barely escaped an enraged mob, and witnessed the day-to-day developments from the frontlines. From the halls of power to the back alleys of Cairo, he offers a one-of-a-kind look at a nation in the throes of an uprising. Liberation Square is a revealing and dramatic look at the revolution that transformed the modern history of one of the world's oldest civilizations.