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Celebrate Middle Easter and North African (MENA)/Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Heritage Month in April
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Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry
by George Abraham and Noor Hindi
A love letter to Palestinian ancestors, their descendants, and their land, to all anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, to a history that will never be forgotten, and to a future in which there thrives a free, free Palestine. Poetry has always served as a mode of resistance in Palestinian culture. Heaven looks like Us is a battle-cry against the annihilation of a people. As Palestinian history remains haunted by exile, violence, and grief, so, too, are the poems in this anthology. And yet, editors George Abraham and Noor Hindi present these realities alongside other themes that are also true: queer and feminist perspectives, eco-poetry, meditations on love and time, and lineages of protest. This anthology dares to imagine a future beyond a nation-state for Palestinian people everywhere.
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I'll Tell You When I'm Home: A Memoir
by Hala Alyan
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman--the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn--to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance. As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling: a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.
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Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora
by Reem Assil
Arabiyya celebrates the alluring aromas and flavors of Arab food and the welcoming spirit with which they are shared. Written from her point of view as an Arab in diaspora, Reem takes readers on a journey through her Palestinian and Syrian roots, showing how her heritage has inspired her recipes for flatbreads, dips, snacks, platters to share, and more. With a section specializing in breads of the Arab bakery, plus recipes for favorites such as Salatet Fattoush, Falafel Mahshi, Mujaddarra, and Hummus Bil Awarma, Arabiyya showcases the origins and evolution of Arab cuisine and opens up a whole new world of flavor.
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Fire in Every Direction: A Memoir
by Tareq Baconi
Palestinian writer and activist Baconi tenderly explores identity, nationality, and family history. In the prologue, Baconi uncovers a box of mementos that includes letters from a childhood friend named Ramzi, with whom he fell in love. From there, he traces his family's harrowing migrations from Palestine to Lebanon to Jordan in the late 20th century, fleeing violence with every move. At the core of the account is Baconi's adolescent sexual awakening and his struggle to reconcile his identity as a gay man with the expectations of a culture and family that marginalized him. The "exile of the authentic self," as he puts it, becomes a powerful lens through which he examines both personal and political exile.
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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
by Omar El Akkad
On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: 'One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.' This tweet was viewed more than ten million times. [This book] chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, [and] Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.
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Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal
by Mohammed El-Kurd
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusalan ode to the steadfastness of a nation. Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured-the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
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Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece
by Nasser Rabah
Gazan poet Nasser Rabah embodies the magnificent possibilities of the human spirit and imagination under extreme conditions. Born in Gaza in 1963, Rabah spent some of his formative years in Egypt, before returning to Gaza in his early twenties, where he has lived ever since. There, among the generations who built its neighborhoods and populate its villages, in a place of great natural beauty and vibrant cities, living under constant surveillance, military occupation, blockade, siege and regular attack, in a culture steeped in literary and spiritual tradition, Rabah developed his distinctively singular vision and poetics. This is Rabah's first book in English translation. Rabah's poems can be raw and uninhibited by social or literary conventions, exploring and questioning one's relationship to divinity in absurd circumstances while confronting the sacred cows of his own society, along with the sometimes voyeuristic interest from those on the outside of it. His poetry constantly interrogates--sometimes playfully and sometimes in utter existential despair--the paradoxes and difficulties of expression and of writing itself. This is a bi-lingual edition and includes the original versions in Arabic.
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Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine
by Raja Shehadeh
Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh offers a moving description of the daily lives of those who have been determined to remain on Palestinian land under Israeli occupation and refusing to relent in the face of efforts to drive them out by making their lives unbearable. He witnessed the numerous arrests of his father, Aziz Shehadeh, who, in 1967, was the first Palestinian to advocate a peaceful, 2-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ostracized by his fellow Arabs and disillusioned by the failure of either side to recognize his prophetic vision, Aziz retreated from politics. He was murdered in 1985. Strangers in the House is also the family drama of a difficult relationship between an idealistic son and his politically active father complicated by the arbitrary humiliation of the occupier's law. A new Afterword provides an update on the investigation into his father's murder, a history that reflects continued official Israeli efforts to dehumanize Palestinians and to extinguish, once and for all, the possibility of a 2-state solution.
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Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
by Raja Shehadeh
Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine--now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories--and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialized, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased--and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land. In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba--the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians--but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.
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Terror Counter
by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
A debut collection of poems which acts against the many languages-interpersonal, legal, literary, rhetorical-constricting the lives and meanings of Palestinians. It moves through sections of varying experimentalism, from an invented visual form (the Gazan Tunnel) to all-caps queer ecstatic, attempting to carve out a space for the negotiation of an alternative subjecthood. The voices in this collection are driven by despair, futility, utopia, vulnerability and the spirit of a collective liberation; they move in search of a lyrical voice which can inhabit both the paranoid preservationist mode that facilitates Palestinian survival, and the imaginative possibilities that might make possible Palestinian life. Terror Counter asks: where and how might a Palestinian subject escape the public consumption of American letters? And, ultimately, how can we continue to love each other amidst the endless terror of the colonial world?
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The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
by Gordon Corera
The story of how one man--a librarian for the KGB--became a traitor to the intelligence agency, stealing the most prized Soviet-era archives and smuggling them to the West. How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy; a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today. Historian and journalist Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin's earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realization that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family there, and then of one man's journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal, and defection.
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Food Fix Uncensored: Inside the Food Industry's Biggest Cover-Ups
by Mark Hyman
This is not a diet book. It's an indictment. Food Fix Uncensored is the fully revised and expanded edition of Dr. Mark Hyman's bestselling 2020 wake-up call, now more revealing than ever. In a world where food is engineered more for profit than nourishment, every bite you take matters--not just for your health, but for the future of our planet. Dr. Hyman invites you to question: What if the chronic diseases we accept as normal... aren't? What if our broken food system was designed to protect power and profits rather the health of the American public? What if the solution to our biggest health crises isn't more medicine--but better food? The shocking stats you read about Americans' declining health are not the result of personal failures. They're policy failures by design - the result of a system rigged by Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma to keep you sick and addicted. Food Fix Uncensored rips the veil off the multibillion-dollar machine hijacking our bodies, our brains, and our children's futures, and hands you the tools to take it all back. Balancing cutting-edge nutritional science with unflinching journalistic investigation, Food Fix Uncensored doesn't just ask you to eat differently. It dares you to see differently. After reading this, you'll never look at your food the same way again.
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Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age
by Ibram X. Kendi
Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia, but heard around the world: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters around the world—in Oslo and Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface of this ascendant idea: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have been expressing some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change and restoring national greatness.
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Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
by Carla Kaplan
Troublemaker tells the wild and unlikely story of Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous Mitford Girls, a British aristocrat-turned-American Communist. Jessica, always known as Decca, was brought up by an eccentric English family to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the rights of others. Her beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Decca ran away to America to forge a rebel's life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mold. Instead of settling for life as a professional Beauty, she fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, became an American Communist and pioneered witty, hugely popular journalism, including her 1963 blockbuster The American Way of Death. Decca dedicated her life to social justice and proved herself an immensely effective ally, but she also injected laughter into all her political work, annoying some activists with her relentless antics but encouraging many others to find joy in the struggle. Mining extensive, untapped sources, and with nearly fifty new interviews, Kaplan's passionate biography beautifully illuminates how Decca's hard-won and self-taught social empathy offers a powerful example of female freedom, the dramatic, novelistic story of an extraordinary woman of her time who is remarkably relevant and resonant today.
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American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology
by Jon Meacham
America has had shining hours, and also dark ones. In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation's complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus--sometimes discordant and always fascinating--tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham's singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a glorious liberty document. Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
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That's a Great Question, I'd Love to Tell You
by Elyse Myers
Elyse Myers is known to her twelve million followers as 'The Internet's Best Friend,' sharing her relatable stories and comedic sketches and serving as an advocate for topics such as neurodivergence, impostor syndrome, body image, and more. Whether she's making people laugh with tales of disastrous dates or giving a voice to that awkward internal monologue many of us have, she has three simple goals behind everything she makes: To make people feel known, loved, and like they belong. In [this book], Elyse delivers a debut collection of deeply personal stories and hand-drawn illustrations, offering even more intimate reflections beyond what fans have seen on her social media
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Battle of the Arctic: The Maritime Epic of World War II
by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
No campaign during World War II contained more spinetingling drama, outstanding courage, and heartbreaking tragedy than the Arctic convoys. Yet they--and the multifaceted battle of the Arctic that had to be fought to get them through to Russia--remain one of the war's most under-celebrated feats. The action unfolded as Allied naval and merchant seamen, airmen, submariners, soldiers and intelligence officers delivered on their countries' promise to take arms to Russia notwithstanding the German attempts to hunt them in their aircraft, U-boats and surface fleet spearheaded by Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. When ships were attacked and went down in seas so cold that a man could die after just five minutes of immersion, it triggered events reminiscent of the do-or-die moments during the sinking of the Titanic. Men perished one by one in lifeboats and as castaways on deserted Arctic islands where they were stalked by polar bears. Frostbitten and wounded survivors ended up in Russian hospitals so primitive that amputations were carried out without anesthetics. Other survivors, while stranded for months in the communist state they were aiding, experienced the murky worlds of the NKVD and the gulag as well as famine and prostitution. Using new material unearthed in American, British, Russian and German archives, as well as Polish, Norwegian, French and Dutch sources, and a remarkable collection of vivid witness accounts brought together at the passing of the last survivors, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore can at last shine a revealing light on this extraordinary tale that oscillates between the sailors' eye view on the front line, and the controversies that infuriated world leaders.
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Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump
by Daniel E. Zoughbie
The compelling, groundbreaking investigation of how the choices of twelve US presidents, from Truman to Trump, have fueled turbulence and turmoil in the Middle East. And the one president who chose a better way. Kicking the Hornet's Nest is a riveting exploration of how twelve US presidents have shaped the Middle East, often unleashing instability and conflict along the way. It is also the story of one US president who successfully charted a better course. From Truman to Trump, Daniel Zoughbie meticulously unpacks the decisions that have set the stage for today's unrest. Today, the Middle East stands as a volatile landscape, more tumultuous than at any time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Zoughbie paints a vivid picture of how nearly every major nation-state in the Middle East and North Africa has grappled with existential crises in the recent years, paving the way for terrorist groups to threaten national sovereignty and for local conflicts to destabilize world order. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources and interviews with world leaders, the narrative explores pressing issues like nuclear proliferation, genocide, and nationalist conflicts fueled by sectarian fervor that have triggered global refugee waves. Kicking the Hornet's Nest is an eye-opening study of US presidential decision-making and foreign policy and its profound impact on billions of lives worldwide.
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