Middle America

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 ...

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 Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources.

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...

Brigitte Gabriel lost her childhood to militant Islam. Because They Hate is a political wake-up call. Brigitte warns that the United States is threatened by fundamentalist Islamic theology in the same way Lebanon was - radical Islam will stop at nothing short of domination of all non-Muslim countries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unless we start addressing the causes of climate change and stop simply navigating its effects, we will be facing a series of unstoppable catastrophes by the time our preschoolers graduate from college. Our world is in trouble - right now. This Is the Way the World Ends tells the real stories of the substantial impacts to Earth’s systems unfolding across each continent.

For over a decade, Jim Tankersley has been on a journey to understand what the hell happened to the world's greatest middle-class success story - the post-World-War-II boom that faded into decades of stagnation and frustration for American workers. In The Riches of This Land, Tankersley fuses the story of forgotten Americans - struggling women and men who he met on his journey into the travails of the middle class - with important new economic and political research, providing fresh understanding on how to create more widespread prosperity.

What happens when democracy produces "bad" outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? This "democratic dilemma" is one of the most persistent, vexing problems for America abroad, particularly in the Middle East. When Islamist parties rise to power through free elections, the United States has too often been ambivalent or opposed, preferring instead pliable dictators. With this legacy of democratic disrespect in mind, and drawing on new interviews with top American officials, Shadi Hamid explores universal questions of morality, power, and hypocrisy.

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.

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.