BOOKPATHS

Lebanon Book List

AbuKhalil, As’ad. Historical dictionary of Lebanon (1998)

Aburish, Said K.  The St. George Hotel bar (1989)

Accawi, Anwar F. The boy from the tower of the moon (1999)

Adnan, Etel. In the heart of the heart of another country (2005)

Adnan, Etel.  Sitt Marie Rose: a novel (1982)

Alameddine, Rabih.  Koolaids: the art of war (1998)

Alameddine, Rabih.  The Perv: stories (1999)

al-Shaykh, Hanan. Beirut blues (1992)

al-Shaykh, Hanan.  The locust and the bird: my mother’s story (2009)

al-Shaykh, Hanan.  The story of Zahra: a novel (1993)

al-Shaykh, Hanan.  Women of sand and myrrh: a novel (1992) (in part)

Aubet, Maria Eugenia. The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade (2001)

Bache, Ellyn.  Safe passage (1988)

Barakat, Huda. The stone of laughter: a novel (1995)

Barnea, Amalia. Mine enemy (1988)

Béchara, Souha.  Resistance: my life for Lebanon (2003)

Blanford, Nicholas.  Killing Mr. Lebanon: the assassination of Rafik Hariri and its impact on the Middle East (2006)

Bushrui, Suheil. Kahlil Gibran, man and poet: a new biography (1998)

Chomsky, Noam. Fateful triangle: the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (1999)

Cohen, Florence Chanock.  The sea of stones: a novel in three parts (1993) (in part)

Cooke, Miriam.  War’s other voices: women writers on the Lebanese civil war (1988)

Cortas, Wadad Makdisi.  A world I loved: the story of an Arab woman (2009)

Dagher, Carole. Bring down the walls: Lebanon’s postwar challenge (2000)

Da’if, Rashīd.. Dear Mr. Kawabata (1999)

Da’if, Rashīd.  Passage to dusk (2001)

Darwish, Mahmoud. Memory for forgetfulness (1995)

Dawud, Hasan. The house of Mathilde (1999)

El-Khazen, Farid. The breakdown of the state in Lebanon, 1967-1976 (2000)

Fallaci, Oriana. Inshallah (1992)

Fisk, Robert. Pity the nation: the abduction of Lebanon (2002)

Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem: updated with a new chapter (1995)

Ghoussoub, Mai. Leaving Beirut: women and the wars within (1998)

Gibran, Jean. Kahlil Gibran, his life and world (1998)

Gibran, Kahil. Blue flame: the love letters of Kahlil Gibran to May Ziadah (1983)

Gibran, Kahil. The prophet (1923)

Gorton, T. J. and A. Féghali Gorton, editors. Lebanon: through writers’ eyes (2009)

Hage, Rawi. De Niro’s game (2006)

Halasa, Malu and Roseanne Saad Khalaf, editors.  Transit Beirut: new writing and images (2004)

Hamid, Dina Abdel. Duet for freedom (1988)

Hamilton, Masha.  The distance between us (2004)

Hammad, Suheir. Drops of this story (1996)

Hamzeh, Ahmad Nizar.  In the path of Hizbullah (2004)

Harris, William W. The new face of Lebanon: history’s revenge (2006)

Haugbolle, Sune. War and memory in Lebanon (2010)

Hiro, Dilip.  Lebanon: fire and embers: a history of the Lebanese civil war (1993)

Hoffman, Andy. Beehive (1992)

Holst, Sanford and Antoine Khoury Harb. Phoenicians: Lebanon’s epic heritage (2005)

Hovsepian, Nubar, editor.  The war on Lebanon: a reader (2008)

Jarrar, Nada A. Somewhere, home (2003)

Kanafani, Fay Afaf.  Nadia, captive of hope: memoir of an Arab woman (1999)

Karam, Michael. Arak and mezze: the taste of Lebanon (2008)

Kenway, Kristin. Bliss Street (2003)

Kfoury, Assaf, editor. Inside Lebanon: journey to a shattered land with Noam and Carol Chomsky (2007)

Khalaf, Samir. Civil and uncivil violence in Lebanon: a history of the internationalization of communal conflict (2004)

Khalidi, Rashid and Nubar Hovsepian. The war on Lebanon: a reader (2007)

Khalidi, Walid. Conflict and violence in Lebanon: confrontation in the Middle East (1983)

Khoury, Elias. Gates of the city (1981)

Khoury, Elias. Gate of the sun (1998)

Khoury, Elias. The journey of little Gandhi (1989)

Khoury, Elias. The kingdom of strangers (1993)

Khoury, Elias.  Little mountain (1977)

Khoury, Elias.  White masks (1981)

Khoury, Elias. Yalo (2002)

Lamb, Franklin P., editor.  Reason not the need: eyewitness chronicles of Israeli’s war in Lebanon (1984)

Maalouf, Amin. Origins (2004)

Maalouf,  Amin.  The rock of Tanios (1994)

Mackey, Sandra. Lebanon: a house divided (1989)

Mackey, Sandra. Mirror of the Arab world: Lebanon in conflict (2008)

Makdisi, Jean Said. Beirut fragments: a war memoir (1990)

Makdisi, Jean Said. Teta, mother and me: an Arab woman’s memoir (2005)

Marcom, Micheline Aharonian. The daydreaming boy (2004)

Mishāqa, Mikhāyil.  Murder, mayhem, pillage and plunder: the history of the Lebanon in the 18^th and 19^th centuries (1988)

Nasrallah, Emily. Flight against time (1998)

Newman, Barbara. The covenant: love and death in Beirut (1989)

Norton, Augustus Richard.  Hezbollah: a short history (2007)

Nuweihed, Jaml Sleem. Abu Jmeel’s daughter and other stories: Arab folk tales from Palestine and Lebanon (2002)

Oz, Amos. The slopes of Lebanon (1989)

Pintak, Larry.  Seeds of hate: how America’s flawed Middle East policy ignited the jihad (2003)

Qassem, Naim.  Hizbullah: the story from within (2005)

Rabinovich, Itamar.  The war for Lebanon, 1970-1985 (1985)

Robertson, Margaret Lowrie. Season of betrayal (2006)

Rougier, Bernard. Everyday jihad: the rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon (2007)

Rugh, Belle Dorman.  Crystal Mountain (1955)

Saab, Mahmoud Khalil.  Stories and scenes from Mount Lebanon (1975)

Salem, Elise.  Constructing Lebanon: a century of literary narratives (2003)

Salibi, Kamal.  A house of many mansions: the history of Lebanon reconsidered (1988)

Sammān, Ghādah. Beirut nightmares (1997)

Sawalha, Aseel.  Reconstructing Beirut: memory and space in a postwar Arab city (2010)

Shakespeare, William. Pericles, Prince of Tyre (ca. 1603-8)

Shaykh, Hanan. Beirut blues: a novel (1995)

Shaykh, Hanan. The locust and the bird: my mother’s story (2009)

Smith, Joan. What will survive (2007)

Smith, Lee.  The strong horse: power, politics and the clash of Arab civilizations (2010) (in part)

Theroux, Peter. The house of Mathilde (1999)

Thubron, Colin.  The hills of Adonis: a quest in Lebanon (1968)

Timerman, Jacobo. The longest war: Israel in Lebanon (1982)

Traboulsi, Fawwaz.  A history of modern Lebanon (2007)

Tyrrell, Patricia. Grandmother Wolf (2005)

Ward, Patricia Sarrafian. The bullet collection (2003)

Wright, Robin.  Sacred rage: the crusade of modern Islam (1985)

Younes, Iman Humaydan.  Wild mulberries (2008)

Young, Michael.  The ghosts of Martyrs Square: an eyewitness account of Lebanon’s life struggle (2010)

Laos Book List

Bounyavong, Outhine. Mother’s beloved: stories from Laos (1999)

Brown, Mervyn. War in Shangri-La: a memoir of civil war in Laos (2001)

Castle, Timothy N.  One day too long (1999)

Conboy, Kenneth, with James Morrison. Shadow war: the CIA’s secret war in Laos (1995)

Connors, Mary F. Lao textiles and traditions (1996)

Coterill, Colin. Anarchy and old dogs (2007)

Cotterill, Colin. The coroner’s lunch (2004)

Cotterill, Colin. Disco for the departed (2006)

Cotterill, Colin. The merry misogynist: a Dr. Siri investigation set in Laos (2010)

Cotterill, Colin. Thirty-three teeth: a novel (2005) (booksense September 2005)

Dakin, Brett. Another quiet American: stories of life in Laos (2003)

Dengler, Dieter. Escape from Laos (1979)

Dooley, Tomas A. The night they burned the mountain (1993)

Du Pont de Bie, Natacha. Ant egg soup: the adventures of a food tourist in Laos (2004)

Evans, Grant. The last century of Lao royalty: a documentary history (2009)

Evans, Grant. The politics of ritual and remembrance: Laos since 1975 (1998)

Evans, Grant and Milton Osborne. A short history of Laos: the land in between (2003)

Fadiman, Anne. The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures (1997) (in part)

Hamilton-Merritt, Jane. Tragic mountains: the Hmong, the Americans and the secret wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (1993)

Huo, T. C. A thousand wings (1998)

Murphy, Dervla. One foot in Laos (1999)

Ngaosrivathana, Mayoury and Kennon Breazeale. Breaking new ground in Lao history: essays on the seventh to twentieth centuries (2002)

Panasuwan, Piriya. Chao fa (2000)

Pholsena, Vatthana. Post-war Laos: the politics of culture, history and identity (2006)

Stevenson, Charles A. The end of nowhere: American policy toward Laos since 1954 (1972)

Stuart-Fox, Martin.  Contemporary Laos: studies in the politics and society of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (1983)

Stuart-Fox, Martin. Historical dictionary of Laos (2001)

Stuart-Fox, Martin. A history of Laos (1997)

Tomecko, Denise. Buddhist healing in Laos: plants of the fragrant forest (2009)

Warner, Roger. Back fire: the CIA’s secret war in Laos and its link to the war in Vietnam (1995)

Xiong, Ia. The gift: the Hmong New Year (1996)

Yang, Kao Klia. The late homecomer: a Hmong family memoir (2008) (in part)

Kyrgyzstan Book List

Abazov, Rafis. Historical dictionary of Kyrgyzstan (2004)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Cassandra’s brand (1996)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. The day lasts more than a hundred years (1980)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. A difficut passage (1956)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Face to face (1957)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. The first teacher (1962)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Farewell, Gulsary! (1966)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Jamilia (1958)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Mother Earth and other stories (1989)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. The place of the skull (1989)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. The scaffold (1986)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. Tales of the mountains and steppes (1963)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. When the mountains fall (2006)

Aitmatov, Chingiz. The white steamship (1970)

Anderson, John. Kyrgystan: Central Asia’s island of democracy? (1999)

Antipina, Claudia, Temirbek Musakeev and Rolando Paiva. Kyrgyzstan (2007)

Hiro, Dilip. Inside Central Asia: a political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz (2009) (in part)

Maier, Frith. Trekking in Russia and Central Asia (1994)

Moorhouse, Geoffrey. Apples in the snow: a journey to Samarkand (1990) (in part)

Prior, Daniel, editor. Manas: the epic vision of Theodor Herzen (1995)

Rosenberg, Robert. This is not civilization (2004) (in part)

Ross, Emily. 100 letters home: my two years in Kyrgyzstan (2009)

Kuwait Book List

Ansari, Leena. Growing up in Kuwait (1995)

Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: the creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, 1870-1914 (1997)

Atil, Esin, editor. Islamic art and patronage: treasures from Kuwait (1990)

Bibby, Geoffrey. Looking for Dilmun (1996)  (in part)

Bloom, Saul, et al., editors. Hidden casualties: environmental, health, and political consequences of the Persian Gulf War (1994)

Casey, Michael S. The history of Kuwait (2007)

Daniels, John. Kuwait journey (1971)

Finnie, David H. Shifting lines in the sand: Kuwait’s elusive frontier with Iraq (1992)

Friedman, Thomas. From Beirut to Jerusalem: updated with a new chapter (1995) (in part)

Hays, Tony. The trouble with patriots: a novel (2001)

Hobbet, Anastasia. Small kingdoms (2010)

Mansfield, Peter. The new Arabians (1981) (in part)

Paine, Tom. The pearl of Kuwait (2003)

Rahman, H. The making of the Gulf War: origins of Kuwait’s long-standing territorial dispute with Iraq (1997)

Rajab, Jehan S. Invasion Kuwait: an English woman’s tale (1994)

Ruthven, Malise. Freya Stark in Iraq and Kuwait (1994)

Slot, B. The origins of Kuwait (1991)

Kazakhstan Book List

Aitken, Jonathan. Nazarbayev and the making of Kazakhstan (2009)

Furgus, Michael and Janar Jandosova, editors. Kazakhstan: coming of age (2004)

Hiro, Dilip. Inside Central Asia: a political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz (2009)

Olcott, Martha Brill. The Kazakhs (1995)

Robbins, Christopher. Apples are from Kazakhstan: the land that disappeared (2008)

Rosten, Keith. Once in Kazakhstan: the snow leopard emerges (2005)

Schreiber, Dagmar. Kazakhstan: nomadic routes from Caspian to Altai (2008)

Shayakhmetov, Mukhamet. The silent Steppe: the story of a Kazakh nomad under Stalin (2006)

Jordan Book List

Abu-Jaber, Diana. The language of baklava (2005) (in part)

Adams, Russell B., editor. Jordan: an archaeological reader (2008)

Ashton, Nigel. King Hussein of Jordan: a political life (2008)

Caulfield, Annie. Kingdom of the film stars: journey into Jordan (1997)

Faqir, Fadia. Pillars of salt (1996)

Gubser, Peter. Historical dictionary of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (1991)

Habib, Randa. Hussein and Abdullah: inside the Jordanian royal family (2010)

Halaby, Laila. West of the Jordan: a novel (2003)

Hamilton, Marsha. Staircase of a thousand steps (2001)

Hourani, Albert. A history of the Arab peoples (1980) (in part)

Khammash, Ammar. Ancient landscape: the landscape paintings of Ammar Khammash (2009)

Kreiger, Barbara. The dead sea: myth, history, and politics (1997) (in part)

Kreiger, Barbara. Living waters: myth, history, and politics of the Dead Sea (1988) (in part)

McKenzie, Judith. The architecture of Petra (1990)

Munif, Abd Al-Rahman. Story of a city: a childhood in Amman (1996)

Niemi, Tina M., Zvi Ben-Avraham and Joel R. Gat. The Dead Sea: the lake and its setting (1997) (in part)

Queen Noor. Leap of faith: memoirs of an unexpected life (2003)

Robins, Philip. A history of Jordan (2004)

Rouyer, Alwyn R. Turning water into politics: the water issue in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (2000)

Shlaim, Avi.  Lion of Jordan: the life of King Hussein in war and peace (2008)

Taylor, Jane.  Petra and the lost kingdom of th Nabataens (2001)

Echo Park, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Mandalit del Barco talks with The Madonnas of Echo Park author, Brando Skyhorse.

In 'The Madonnas of Echo Park', Skyhorse draws from his childhood memories to tell the story of Echo Park as he knew it.

‘There was this sort of weird cast of characters just kind of around the neighborhood,' he says. 'There was this one elderly lady who used to wear a turban and this lime green coat, and she would walk up and down the neighborhood. For some reason, she always stopped at our house… because I guess my grandmother was very chatty… and she'd stop at 1 in the morning, pound on the door and say, 'This is the police, open up!’ – from NPR Website

Iraq Book List

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. Behind the war on terror: western secret strategy and the struggle for Iraq (2003)

Ajami, Fouad. The Foreigner’s Gift: the Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq  (2006)

Al-Ali, Nadje Sadig. Iraq women: untold stories from 1948 to the present (2007)

Al-Amir, Daisy. The waiting list: an Iraqi woman’s tale of alienation (1994)

Al-Azzawi, Fadhil. Miracle maker: selected poems (2003)

Al-Khalidi, Rodhan. Thirsty river (2009)

Al-Radi, Nuha. Baghdad diaries: a woman’s chronicle of war and exile (2003)

Al-Ramli, Muhsin. Scattered crumbs (2000)

Allwai, Ali A. The occupation of Iraq: winning the war, losing the peace (2007)

Anderson, Jon Lee. The fall of Baghdad (2004)

Amorim, Hans C. and Celso N. A different kind of war: the UN sanctions regime in Iraq (2006)

Anthony, Lawrence, et al. Babylon’s Ark: the incredible wartime rescue of the Baghdad Zoo (2007)

Antoon, Sinan. The Baghdad blues (2007)

Antoon, Sinan. I’jaam: an Iraqi rhapsody (2007)

Arnove, Anthony. Iraq: the logic of withdrawal (2006)

Asmar, Maria Theresa. Memoirs of a Babylonian princess (translated 1894)

Atkinson, Rick. Crusade: the untold story of the Persian Gulf War (1993)

Aziz, Barbara Nimri. Swimming up the Tigris: real life encounters with Iraq (2007)

Ballas, Shimon. Outcast (2007)

Barone, Sam. Dawn of empire (2006)

Benjmin, Marina. Last days in Babylon: the history of a family, the story of a nation (2004)

Burden, Matthew Currier. The blog of war: front-line dispatches from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (2006)

Burton, Richard F., translator. The Arabian nights: tales from a Thousand and one nights (Modern Library edition) (2001) (in part)

Cerf, Christopher, et al, editors. The Iraq War reader: history, documents, opinions (2003)

Chomsky, Norm. Imperial ambitions: conversations on the post-9/11 world (2005)

Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Imperial life in the Emerald City: inside Iraq’s Green Zone (2006)

Chomsky, Norm. Interventions (2007)

Cockburn, Andrew. Out of the ashes: the resurrection of Saddam Hussein (1999)

Crawford, Harriet E. W. Sumer and the Sumerians (2004)

Danner, Mark. Torture and truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the war on terror (2004)

Dawisha. Adeed. Iraq: a political history from independence to occupation (2009)

Dodge, Toby. Inventing Iraq: the failure of nation building and a history denied (2003)

Eames, Andrew. The 8.55 to Baghdad (2004)

Eisner, Peter. The Italian letter: how the Bush administration used a fake letter to build the case for war in Iraq (2007)

Epic of Gilgamesh (ancient Mesopotamia)

Evans, Mike. The final move beyond Iraq: the final solution while the world sleeps (2007)

Everest, Larry. Oil, power and empire: Iraq and the U.S. global agenda (2004)

Fagan, Brian M. Return to Babylon: travelers, archaeologists, and monuments in Mesopotamia (2007)

Fallows, James. Blind into Baghdad: America’s war in Iraq (2006)

Fathi, Saul Silas. Full circle: escape from Baghdad and the return (2005)

Ferguson, Charles.  No end in sight: Iraq’s descent into chaos (2008)

Filkins, Dexter. The forever war (2008)

Foster, Benjamin R. and Karen Polinger Foster. Civilizations of ancient Iraq (2009)

Galbraith, Peter W. The end of Iraq: how American incompetence created a war without end (2006)

Gallaway, Morgana. The nightingale (2009)

Ghareeb, Edmund A. Historical dictionary of Iraq (2004)

Glantz, Aaron. How America lost Iraq (2005)

Gordon, Michael R. and Bernard E. Trainor.  Cobra II: the inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq (2006)

Hersh, Seymour M. Chain of command: the road from 9/11 to Abu Gharaib (2004)

Hoffmann, Stanley. Gulliver unbound: America’s imperial temptation and the war in Iraq (2004)

Hollingsworth, Jonathan. What we think now: young people’s response to the U.S. involvement in Iraq (2006)

Howell, Georgina. Daughter of the desert: the remarkable Gertrude Bell (2006) (in part)

I’jaam. An Iraqi rhapsody (2007)

Isikoff, Michael and David Corn. Hubris: the inside story of spin, scandal, and the selling of the Iraq War (2006)

Ismael, Tareq Y. and William W. Haddad.  Iraq: the human cost of history (2004)

Jamail, Dahr. Beyond the Green Zone: dispatches from an unembedded journalist in occupied Iraq (2007)

Kattan, Naïm. Farewell, Babylon: coming of age in Jewish Baghdad (2007)

Kennedy, Hugh. When Baghdad ruled the Muslim world: the rise and fall of Islam’s greatest dynasty (2005)

Khadra, Yasmina. The sirens of Baghdad: a novel (2007)

Khedairi, Betool. Absent (2005)

Khedairi, Betool. A sky so close: a novel (2001)

Khudayyir, Mohammed. Basrayatha: a portrait of a city (2007)

Kishtainy, Khalid. By the rivers of Babylon (2008)

Kishtainy, Khalid. Tales from old Baghdad: Grandma and I (1997)

Latty, Yvonne and Max Cleland. In conflict: Iraq war veterans speak out on duty, loss and the fight to stay alive (2006)

Leick, Gwendolyn. Historical dictionary of Mesopotamia (2003)

Leick, Gwendolyn. Mesopotamia: the invention of the city (2001)

Mamdouh, Alia. Mothballs (2004)

Mamdouh, Alia. Naphtalene: a novel of Baghdad (2005)

Mawell, Gavin. A reed shaken by the wind: travels among the Marsh Arabs of Iraq (1990)

Michael, Sami. Victoria (1995)

Mikhail, Dunya. Diary of a wave outside the sea (2009)

Miller, T. Christian. Blood Money: wasted billions, lost lives, and corporate greed in Iraq  (2006)

Mohammed, Sadek, et al., editors. Flowers of the flame: unheard voices of Iraq (2008)

Mowle, Thomas. Hope is not a plan: the war in Iraq from inside the Green Zone (2007)

Mumford, Steve. Baghdad journal: an artist in occupied Iraq (2005)

Mustafa, Shakir, editor. Contemporary Iraqi fiction: an anthology (2008)

Nadir, Leilah. The orange trees of Baghdad: in search of my lost family (2007)

Nissen, Hans J. and Peter Heine. From Mesopotamia to Iraq: a concise history (2009)

Ochsenschlager, Edward L. Iraq’s Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden (2004)

Oppenheim, A. Leo.  Ancient Mesopotamia: portrait of a dead civilization (1977)

Packer, George. The assassins’ gate: America in Iraq (2005)

Polk, William Roe. Understanding Iraq; the whole sweep of Iraqi history, from Genghis Khan’s Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American occupation (2005)

Prados, John. Hoodwinked: the documents that reveal how Bush sold us a war (2004)

Raddatz, Martha. The long road home: a story of war and family (2007)

Raffo, Heather. 9 parts of desire (2006)

Rampton, Sheldon, et al. The best war ever: lies, damned lies, and the mess in Iraq (2006)

Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq (2006)

Ricks, Thomas E. The gamble: General David Petraeus and the American military adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (2009)

Ritter, Scott. Endgame: solving the Iraq problem – once and for all (1999)

Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq (1964)

Ruthven, Malise. Freya Stark in Iraq and Kuwait (1994)

Rutledge, Ian. Addicted to oil: America’s relentless drive for energy security (2005)

Sabar, Ariel. My father’s paradise: a son’s search for his Jewish past in Kurdish Iraq (2008)

Sackville-West, Vita. Passenger to Teheran (1926) (in part)

Salbi, Zainab, et al. Between two worlds: escape from tyranny: growing up in the shadow of Saddam (2005)

Sasson, Jean. Love in a torn land: Joanna of Kurdistan: the true story of a freedom fighter’s flight from Iraqi vengeance (2007)

Sasson, Jean. Mayada, daughter of Iraq: one woman’s survival under Saddam Hussein (2003)

Schlesinger, Arthur M. War and the American presidency (2004)

Seierstad, Asne. A hundred and one days: a Baghdad journal (2004)

Shadid, Anthony. Night draws near: Iraq’s people in the shadow of America’s war (2005)

Stark, Freya. Baghdad sketches (1939)

Stark, Freya. Beyond Euprates (1951) (in part)

Stewart, Rory. The prince of the marshes: and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq (2006)

Tharoor, Shashi. Bookless in Baghdad: reflections on writing and writers (2005)

Thesiger, Wilfred. The Marsh Arabs (1964)

Thesiger, Wilfred. A vanished world (2001)

Tripp, Charles. A history of Iraq (2007)

Trouern-Trend, Jonathan. Birding Babylon: a soldier’s journal from Iraq (2006)

Unger, Craig. The fall of the house of Bush : the untold story of how a band of true believers seized the executive branch, started the Iraq War, and still imperils America’s future (2007)

Unsworth, Barry. Land of marvels: a novel (2009)

Woodward, Bob. Bush at war (2002)

Yahia, Mona. When the grey beetles took over Baghdad (2000)

Youssef, Saadi. Without an alphabet, without a face: selected poems (2002)

Zangana, Haifa. City of windows: an Iraqi woman’s account of war and resistance (2007)

Zangana, Haifa. Dreaming of Baghdad (2009)

Zangana, Haifa. Women on a journey: between Baghdad and London (2007)

Zizek, Slavoj. The borrowed kettle (2004)

Iran Book List

Abdolah, Kader. My father’s notebook: a novel of Iran (2006)

Abdolah, Kader. The house of the mosque (2010)

Alam, Muzaffar and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Indo-Persian travels in the age of discoveries, 1400-1800 (2007)

Alavi, Bozorg, et al. Her eyes (1989)

Alavi, Nasrin. We are Iran: the Persian blogs (2005)

Amirrezvani, Anita. The blood of flowers (2007)

Arjomand, Said Amir. The turban for the crown: the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1988)

Aryanpour, Azar. Behind the tall walls (1998)

Asayesh, Gelareh. Saffron sky: a life between Iran and America (1999)

Axworthy, Michael. A history of Iran: empire of the mind (2008)

Aziz, Shahzad. In the land of the Ayatollahs Tupac Shakur is king: reflections from Iran and the Arab world (2007)

Baharloo, Morteza. The quince seed potion: a novel (2004)

Bahrampour, Tara. To see and see again: a life in Iran and America (1999)

Ballas, Shimon. Outcast (2007)

Baraheni, Reza. God’s shadow: prison poems (1976)

Barsamian, David, Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozzaffari. Targeting Iran (2007) (City Lights)

Behbahani, Simin. A cup of sin: selected poems (1999)

Bell, Gertrude. Persian pictures (1928)

Benard, Cheryl and Zalmay Khalizad. The government of God: Iran’s Islamic Republic  (1984)

Bill, James A.  Eagle and the lion: the tragedy of American Iranian relations (1988)

Bird, Christiane. Neither East nor West: one woman’s journey through the Islamic Republic of Iran (2001)

Bird, Isabella. Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891)

Blow, David, editor. Persia: through writers’ eyes (2007)

Briongos, Ana M. Black on black: Iran revisited (2000)

Browne, Edward Granville. A year amongst the Persians (1927)

Buchan, James. The Persian bride: a novel (2000)

Byron, Robert. Road to Oxiana (1937)

Cambridge history of Iran: complete set (1993)

Canby, Sheila. The golden age of Persian art, 1501-1722 (1999)

Carroll, Michael. From a Persian tea house: travels in old Iran (2007)

Chubak. Sadiq. The patient stone (1989)

Corbin, Henry, et al. The voyage and the messenger: Iran and philosophy (1998)

Crowther, Yasmin. The saffron kitchen (2006)

Daneshvar, Simin. A Persian requiem: a novel (1992)

Daneshvar, Simin, et al. Savushun: a novel about modern Iran (1990)

Daniel, Elton L. The history of Iran (2001)

Danziger, Nick.  Danziger’s travels: beyond forbidden frontiers (1987) (in part)

Davis, Dick. At home, and farm from home: poems on Iran and Persian culture (2009)

Davis, Dick.  Epic and sedition: the case of Ferdowsis Shahnameh (1992)

De Bellaique, Christopher. In the rose garden of the martyrs: a memoir of Iran (2005)

De Bellaique, Christopher. The struggle for Iran (2007)

Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America (2003)

Ebadi, Shirin. Iran awakening: one woman’s journey to reclaim her life and country (2007)

English, Barbara. The war for a Persian lady (1971)

Esfandiary, F. M. Identity cord (1966)

Esfandiary, Haleh. My prison, my home: one woman’s story of captivity in Iran (2009)

Farmaian, Sattareh Farman.  Daughter of Persia: a woman’s journey from her father’s harem through the Islamic Revolution (1992)

Farmanfarmaian, Manucher.  Blood and oil: inside the Shah’s Iran (1997)

Farmanfarmaian, Monir Shahroudy. A mirror garden (2007)

Ferdowsi, Abolqasem. Fathers and sons (stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, volume 2) (2002)

Ferdowsi, Abolqasem. The legend of Seyavash (Penguin classic) (2004)

Ferdowski, Abolqasem.  The lion and the throne: stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, volume 1 (1998)

Ferdowski, Abolqasem. Rostam: tales of love and war from the Shahnameh (2009)

Ferdowski, Abolqasem. Sunset of empire: stories from the Shahnameh, volume 3 (2003)

Firouz, Anahita. In the walled gardens: a novel (2002)

Frye, Richard Nelson.  The heritage of Persia (1963)

Goff, Clare. An archaeologist in the making: six seasons in Iran (1980)

Green, John and Farzin Yazdanfar, editors. A walnut sapling on Masih’s grave and other stories by Iranian women (1993)

Guppy, Shusha. The blindfold horse: memories of a Persian childhood (1988)

Hafez. The fifty poems of Chemsed din Mohammed Hafiz (1953)

Harnack, Curtis. Persian lions, Persian lambs (1965)

Hedayat, Sadegh. The blind owl (1997)

Hedayat, Sadeq. Three drops of blood (2008)

Hiro, Dilip. Iran under the Ayatollahs (1985)

Hourani, Albert. History of the Arab peoples (1991)

Hovanessian, Elma. Under the blue dome (2003)

Johnson, Diane. Persian nights (1987)

Jubber, Nicholas. Drinking arak off an ayatollah’s beard: a journey through the inside-out worlds of Iran and Afghanistan (2010)

Kapuscinski, Ryszard. Shah of shahs (1985)

Karim, Persis M., editor. A world between: poems, short stories, and essays by Iranian-Americans (1999)

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: roots and results of revolution (2006)

Keshavarz, Fatemeh. Jasmine and the stars: reading more than Lolita in Tehran (2007)

Khadivi, Laleh. The age of orphans: a novel (2009)

Khayyám, Omar. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (11th century?)

Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shahs men: an American coup and the roots of Middle East terror (2003)

Limbert, John. Shiraz in the age of Hafez: the glory of a medieval Persian city (2004)

Maalouf, Amin. The gardens of light (1996)

Maalouf, Amin. Samarkand (1996)

Mackey, Sandra. The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the soul of a nation (1996)

Majd, Hooman. The Ayatollah begs to differ: the paradox of modern Iran (2008)

Mandanipou, Shahriar. Censoring an Iranian love story (2009)

Maroufi, Abbas. Symphony of the dead (2007)

Mehdavi, Anne. Persian adventure (1953)

Mehran, Marsha. Pomegranate soup (2005) (in part)

Moaveni, Azadeh. Lipstick Jihad: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran (2006)

Modarressi, Taghi. The virgin of solitude: a novel (2008)

Molavi, Afshin. The soul of Iran: a nation’s journey to freedom (2005)

Molavi, Afshin. Persian pilgrimages: journeys across Iran (2002)

Morier, James. The adventures of Haiji Baba of Ispahan (1824)

Moshiri, Farnoosh. At the wall of the almighty: a novel (2000)

Mottahedeh, Roy. The mantle of the prophet: religion and politics in contemporary Iran (1985)

Mozaffari, Nahid. Strange times, my dear: the PEN anthology of contemporary Iranian literature (2005)

Mullaney, James P. The ministry of culture (2007) (in part)

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (2003)

Nafisi, Azar. Things I’ve been silent about: memories (2008)

Nahai, Gina. Caspian rain (2007)

Nahai, Gina B. Cry of the peacock (1991)

Nahai, Gina B. Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (1999)

Noori, Naveed. Dakhmeh (2003)

O’Donnell, Terence. Garden of the brave in war (1980)

Olmstead, A. T. History of the Persian Empire (1959)

Pari, Susanne. The fortune catcher (1997) (in part)

Parsipur, Shahrnush. Women without men: a novella (1998)

Payne, Grace Visher. The unveiling (1950)

Payne, Robert. Journey to Persia (1952)

Pezeshkzad, Iraj.  My Uncle Napoleon (2006)

Pollack, Kenneth M. The Persian puzzle: the conflict between Iran and America (2004)

Pope, Arthur Upham.  Introducing Persian architecture (1971)

Porter, Yves and Arthur Thevenart. Palaces and gardens of Persia (2004)

Pressfield, Steven. Gates of fire: an epic novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (1999)

Rachlin, Nahid. Foreigner (1978)

Rachlin, Nahid. Jumping over fire (2005)

Rachlin, Nahid. Married to a stranger (1983)

Rachlin, Nahid. Persian girls: a memoir (2006)

Rachlin, Nahid. Veils: short stories (1992)

Raffat, Donné. The folly of speaking: the seventh tale (2000) (in part)

Rubin, Barry. Paved with good intentions: the American experience in Iran (1980)

Rufin, Jean-Christophe. The siege of Isfahan (2001)

Sackville-West, Vita.  Passenger to Teheran (1927)

Sackville-West, Vita. Twelve days: an account of a journey across the Bakhtieri Mountains in Southern Persia (1928)

Sa’edi, Gholam-Hossein. Dandil: stories from Iranian life (1968)

Said, Amir Arjomand. The shadow of God and the hidden Imam: religion, political order, and societal change in Shi’ite Iran from the beginning to 1890 (1984)

Said, Kurban. Ali and Nino: a love story (1999)

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: the story of a childhood (2003)

Sayyed, Mohammed Ali Jamalzadeh. Isfahan is half the world: memories of a Persian boyhood (1983)

Sciolino, Elaine. Persian mirrors: the elusive face of Iran (2000)

Shawcross, William. The Shah’s last ride: the fate of an ally (1988)

Simpson, John.  Behind Iranian lines (1988)

Simpson, John. Inside Iran: life under Khomeini’s regime (1988)

Simpson, John and tira Shubart. Lifting the veil: life in revolutionary Iran (1995)

Smith, Anthony. Blind white fish in Persia (1953)

Sofer, Dalia. The Septembers of Shiraz: a novel (2007)

Stark, Freya. Beyond Euphrates (1951)

Stark, Freya. The valleys of the assassins: and other Persian travels (1934)

Stierlin, Henri. Islamic art and architecture: from Isfahan to the Taj Mahal (2002) (in part)

Taheri, Amir. Nest of spies: America’s journey to disaster in Iran (1989)

Taheri, Amir. The spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (1986)

Takeyh, Ray. Hidden Iran: paradox and power in the Islamic Republic (2007)

Taraqqi, Guli. A mansion in the sky: and other short stories (2003)

Vafi, Fariba. My bird (2009)

Vidal, Gore. Creation: a novel (1981) (in part)

Ward, Terence. Searching for Hassan: a journey to the heart of Iran (2002)

Wearing, Alison.  Honeymoon in Purdah: an Iranian journey (2000)

Wiesehofer, Josef. Ancient Persia: from 550 BC to 650 AD (1996)

Wilbur, Donald. Iran past and present: from monarchy to Islamic Republic (1982)

Wright, Robin. The last great revolution: turmoil and transformation in Iran (2000)

Xenophon. The education of Cyrus (2001)

United States; Mexico

Poet and artist Benjamin Saenz talks about living near the U.S. Mexico Border.

It’s not a comfortable place to live. And, if you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place. – Benjamin Saenz, News Hour, NPR Website