Lebanon War

In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, has drawn on his decade in the Middle East to produce the most trenchant, vivid, and thought-provoking book yet on the region.

On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the US Marines barracks in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack our nation would suffer until 9/11. We're still feeling the repercussions today. When Reagan Sent In the Marines tells why the Marines were there, how their mission became confused and compromised, and how President Ronald Reagan used another misguided military venture to distract America from the attack and his many mistakes leading up to it.

Widely heralded on publication as a “must-read” (Military Review) and “important window on America’s battle with al-Qaeda” (Washington Post), Ali Soufan’s revelatory account of the war on terror as seen from its front lines changed the way we understand al-Qaeda and how the United States prosecuted the war — and led to hard questions being asked of our leaders.

The politics and recent history of the Middle East can seem baffling to outsiders. Nowhere was that more evident than during the Lebanon War that raged in 1982. Even contemporary reporting often made fundamental mistakes, and there was little general understanding of what was happening and why. This conflict involved a bewildering number of groups and influences from different parts of the world. The precipitating event was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, carried out by members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

For decades, Fred Burton was a key figure in international counterterrorism and domestic spy craft. As a member of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service in the mid 1980s, he was on the front lines of America's first campaign against terror. Now, in this hard-hitting memoir, Burton emerges from the shadows to reveal who he is, what he has accomplished, and the threats that lurk unseen except by an experienced, world-wise few. Told in a no-holds-barred, gripping, nuanced style, this behind-the scenes account of one counterterrorism agent's life and career is a riveting listen.

Hitler’s Forgotten Children is both a harrowing personal memoir and a devastating investigation into the awful crimes and monstrous scope of the Lebensborn program in World War 2. Created by Heinrich Himmler, the Lebensborn program abducted as many as half a million children from across Europe. Through a process called Germanization, they were to become the next generation of the Aryan master race in the second phase of the Final Solution.

If your desire is to learn complicated grammatical rules or to speak perfectly proper and precise Arabic, this book is not for you. However, if you need to actually hold a conversation while on a trip to Lebanon, to impress that certain someone, or to be able to speak with your grandfather or grandmother as soon as possible, then the Nitzany Method is what you have been looking for.

Before September 11, 2001, one terrorist group had killed more Americans than any other: Hezbollah, the “Party of God.” Today it remains potentially more dangerous than even al Qaeda. Yet little has been known about its inner workings, past successes, and future plans–until now.

The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson’s pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his Fourteen Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations, but while his points were mostly popular amongst Americans and Europeans alike, leaders at the Peace Conference largely discarded them and favored different approaches.

On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in Beirut's Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father meets a sudden and untimely death, Pavlov is approached by a colorful member of the mysterious Hellfire Society - an anti-religious sect that, among many rebellious and often salacious activities, arranges secret burial for outcasts who have been denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality.

Raised on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral.

In 1973, a gunman fired five shots into Colonel Joe Alon, a kind, unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot. As it turned out, Alon wasn't just a pilot and family man - he was a high-ranking Israeli military official and hero of the Israeli Air Force. The assassin was never found and the case was closed. As a counterterrorism special agent, Fred Burton reopened the case and pursued the killer.

In this gripping blend of reportage, memoir, and analysis, a journalist and daughter of one of the world's most famous hostages, Terry Anderson, takes an intimate look at her father's captivity during the Lebanese Hostage Crisis and the ensuing political firestorm surrounding both her family and the United States - as well as the far-reaching implications of those events on Middle Eastern politics today.

We follow the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the long years of the Lebanese civil war. Living with his mother, who “lost her face in the mirror,” he falls in with a gang whose violent escapades he treats as a game. The game becomes a frightening reality, however, when Yalo is accused of rape and imprisoned. He is forced to confess to crimes of which he has no recollection. As he writes, and rewrites, he begins to grasp his family’s past and recall all that his psyche has buried, and the true Yalo begins to emerge.

O'Hara Poit, released early from prison under the pretext of a COVID-19 outbreak, now owes the men who orchestrated it—a radical organization with connections to fringe elements deep within the US political establishment. O'Hara is given an alias and sent to Beirut, where he is tasked with tracking down his estranged childhood friend, Red, now a soldier in a violent anarchist militia being trained by the Volk Group—an elite Russian mercenary force. When Red's militia returns to America, they plan to unleash mayhem and bring down the country.

ADHD as a child, David Egee suffered through many years of reading and writing impairment. "I was ADHD before the expression became a household word.” Egee overcame his learning handicap to become the Director of the American Hospital in Beirut at the age of 35, dealing with such Middle Eastern luminaries as Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi. Later, he established hospitals throughout the Middle East, just before the region exploded. In the 1980s, he worked for Hospital Corp. of America (HCA) in England, setting up nursing homes. When HCA bowed out of Britain, he founded his own nursing ...

This book tells the story of success and reveals the lessons learned by one of NBA’s greatest basketball players. LeBron James is a professional basketball player and is widely considered one of the best players of all time. With numerous endorsement contracts with huge global brands and experience with the best basketball teams, it seems LeBron James found success easily. Yet the basketball player experienced several setbacks and challenges as he rose to the top, and his success is the product of years of hard work and pushing himself to reach his incredibly high standards.

November 7, 1980. An Egyptian writer has chosen the wrong time to come to Beirut in search of a publisher for his controversial new book. Men with machine guns are on every street corner. When the writer meets an old friend from his revolutionary student days, he is introduced to two fascinating women: idealistic filmmaker Antoinette and Lamia, the seductive wife of his would-be publisher.

Beirut is the 2009 World Book Capital, as designated by UNESCO, and at the center of the festivities, in collaboration with the world-renowned Hay Festival, is a competition to identify the 39 most promising young talents in Arab literature. The selection of the "Beirut 39" follows the success of a similar competition in the 2007 World Book Capital, Bogot, celebrating achievements in Latin American literature.

It is 1978 in Beirut, Lebanon, partway through that country's Civil War. On a torn-up street in the city's Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father meets a sudden and untimely death, Pavlov is approached by a colorful member of the mysterious Hellfire Society - a secret group to which his father had belonged. The Society's purpose is to arrange burial or cremation for those who for various reasons have been outcast and abandoned by family, clergy, and state.