Middle America

In The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America's dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America's imperial designs. Washington's secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies.

Things have quieted down for lovable troublemaker Rafe Khatchadorian, and after all the mishaps and adventures he's been through, he's feeling a little restless. So when he's invited to attend an all-expenses-paid art field trip in California, Rafe jumps at the opportunity. But things go sideways, as they always do for Rafe, when he arrives and realizes his trip isn't the Hollywood vacation he thought it would be. Instead, he'll be participating in a "Cultural Campout" in the desert.

Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation - from his past, his parents, his culture - and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle-class America.

An award-winning military journalist tells the amazing stories of 22 soldiers who've won the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award.

In an exclusive residential neighborhood, a U.S. Senator’s wife has died. Tommy Jacks and his fellow journalists don’t believe the police chief’s story blaming it on natural causes. It has the smell of a crime. So begins a new journey set in the 1960s involving numerous dead bodies, high-tension political intrigue, police corruption, the drug underworld and unsavory hidden pasts. Tommy has a lot to write about in his My View political column. Only in his second year as a political columnist, he finds new romance and emotional healing among a chaotic mixture of characters, from his new...

When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she’s ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she’s been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. But as the pressure to be Mickey Catalan heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.

The prison at Abu Ghraib was still a relatively unknown part of America's War on Terror when - with no special training and their gear lost somewhere between the United States and Baghdad - the 152nd Field Artillery Battalion of the Maine National Guard was sent there to serve as guards in February 2004. Just before their arrival, the now infamous photos of the abuses suffered by the prisoners hit the world stage. Abu Ghraib became the focal point not only for global condemnation, but for the insurgents' outrage.

The Israel lobby exerts incredible power and influence over America. While some informed voters know the US provides more foreign aid to Israel than any other country, the total flow of charitable, tax dollar, military aid, intelligence, and “opportunity cost” are unknown to those footing the bill - and the lobby is determined to keep it that way. Yet storm clouds are gathering over Israel’s lobby. Public opinion polls asking the right questions indicate Americans are nowhere near as approving as many Israel lobbyists insist.

From drugstores in Sydney, Iowa, to skeet shooting in rural Illinois, to the mega churches of Minneapolis, Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. Part journalism, part memoir, God Land is a journey into the heart of a deeply divided America. Lenz visits places of worship across the heartland and speaks to the everyday people who often struggle to keep their churches afloat and to cope in a land of instability.

What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran.

The Middle East is the beginning and the end of U.S. foreign policy: events there influence our alliances, make or break presidencies, govern the price of oil, and draw us into war. But it was not always so - and as Patrick Tyler shows in this thrilling chronicle of American misadventures in the region, the story of American presidents' dealings there is one of mixed motives, skulduggery, deceit, and outright foolishness, as well as of policymaking and diplomacy.

What is at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What does justice demand of us in this conflict? This audiobook clarifies an intimidatingly complex issue - and upends conventional views about America’s stake in it. In this audiobook, Elan Journo explains the essential nature of the conflict and what has fueled it for so long. What justice demands, he shows, is that we evaluate both adversaries - and America's approach to the conflict - according to a universal moral ideal: individual liberty.

In The Longest War, Peter Bergen offers a comprehensive history of this war and its evolution, from the strategies devised in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to the fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond. Weaving together internal documents from al-Qaeda and the U.S. offices of counterterrorism, first-person interviews with top-level jihadists and senior Washington officials, along with his own experiences on the ground in the Middle East, Bergen balances the accounts of each side.

In Doomed to Succeed, Ross takes us through every administration from Truman to Obama, throwing into dramatic relief each president's attitudes toward Israel and the region, the often tumultuous debates between key advisers, and the events that drove the policies and at times led to a shift in approach.

Baer goes behind the scenes to show how the U.S. willingly overlooked the corruption of the Saudi royal family, its financing of violent Islamic fundamentalist groups that spread hatred of the West throughout Saudi society, and its bribery of American officials. From a close-up with a corrupt Arab family to the inside scoop on how we helped fund the Taliban, Baer shows what's at stake in our pursuit of oil.

Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers in an unforgiving corner of Arabia. The Last Refuge charts the rise, fall, and resurrection of al-Qaeda in Yemen over the last 30 years, detailing how a group that the United States once defeated has now become one of the world’s most dangerous threats. An expert on Yemen who has spent years on the ground there, Gregory D. Johnsen uses al-Qaeda’s Arabic battle notes to reconstruct their world as they take aim at the United States and its allies.

For soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division, the road to Baghdad began with a midnight flight out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in late February 2003. For Rick Atkinson, who would spend nearly two months covering the division for The Washington Post, the war in Iraq provided a unique opportunity to observe today's U.S. Army in combat.

Courage in Camouflage II is a follow-up to the first set of soldier stories published two years ago in the original Courage in Camouflage. Both collections are based on individual interviews with military veterans young and old from all across the United States. Most of these brave men and women served considerable time in combat during sometimes historic battles in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm, Desert Shield, and the protracted fight against terrorism in the Middle East. Most all have gone on to successful lives outside the military, but things they saw and did ...

"Like the Wind I Go" is a sweeping memoir about identity and independence, as a young man grapples with his burgeoning adulthood and an ancient empire faces its final hours of existence. It’s 1978, and Iran is swept up in a revolutionary fever. Still in college, author Vahid Imani remains cautious, even as his friends and family celebrate a new vision for the country. The people demand democracy, but is that what awaits them? Then, a mysterious tragedy. Vahid stumbles upon the corpse of his missing neighbor, hanging from the beams of his warehouse. He’s just one of many acquaintances to...

The lonely predicament of Carol Kennicott, caught between her desires for social reform and individual happiness, reflects the position in which America's turn-of-the-century "emancipated woman" found herself.