Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

Guests of the Ayatollah
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam
Mark Bowden (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars(122)

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Middle Eastern

From the best-selling author of Black Hawk Down comes a riveting, definitive chronicle of the Iran hostage crisis, America’s first battle with militant Islam. On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly re-created, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.

  • Rank: #29350 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-03-13
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.98" h x 1.50" w x 6.34" l, 2.02 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 704 pages

Description #1 by Alibris:


Description #2 by LoadLib:

From Publishers Weekly Bowden, whose Black Hawk Down won him a National Book Award nomination, turns his sights to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The audio abridgment is generally smooth, though it's often difficult to keep the cast of characters straight: 66 original hostages, dozens of Iranian captors and untold numbers of diplomats, bureaucrats and family members. On audio, such a dizzying array of stories and backstories can become confusing. Bowden is a capable and competent narrator; while there are no tour de force performances here, the reading is solid and consistent, with no annoying vocal tics or other distractions. The real bonus of the audio over the print version is the final disc, which contains several visual enhancements: a PDF map of the embassy compound; a map of Iran, with markings not only for cities but also the landing site of the ill-fated 1980 rescue mission; and, most impressively, almost nine minutes of footage from the Discovery Channel's four-part documentary Guests of the Ayatollah, featuring compelling interviews with surviving members of the rescue team. Copyright Te Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.FromMark Bowden proved he knows how to tell a gripping narrative in Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. In this latest book he takes on a story with more immediate topical consequence, with similar results. It's a "painstaking recreation of those 444 days" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), told mostly from the red, white, and blue perspective. Some Review ers knock Bowden for focusing almost exclusively on the American captives and providing little insight into the motives and emotions of the Iranian hosts. Others note a tendency to get caught up in the finer details of the hostage crisis. But the skill with which he tells his story trumps all such concerns.Copyright Te 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Description #3 by Alibris:


Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

The Twilight War
The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
David Crist (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars(63)

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Middle Eastern

The dramatic secret history of our undeclared thirty-year conflict with Iran, revealing newsbreaking episodes of covert and deadly operations that brought the two nations to the brink of open war

For three decades, the United States and Iran have engaged in a secret war. It is a conflict that has never been acknowledged and a story that has never been told.

This surreptitious war began with the Iranian revolution and simmers today inside Iraq and in the Persian Gulf. Fights rage in the shadows, between the CIA and its network of spies and Iran's intelligence agency. Battles are fought at sea with Iranians in small speedboats attacking Western oil tankers. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations into open warfare. It is a story of shocking miscalculations, bitter debates, hidden casualties, boldness, and betrayal.

A senior historian for the federal government with unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several U.S. administrations, Crist has spent more than ten years researching and writing The Twilight War, and he breaks new ground on virtually every page. Crist describes the series of secret negotiations between Iran and the United States after 9/11, culminating in Iran's proposal for a grand bargain for peace-which the Bush administration turned down. He documents the clandestine counterattack Iran launched after America's 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which thousands of soldiers disguised as reporters, tourists, pilgrims, and aid workers toiled to change the government in Baghdad and undercut American attempts to pacify the Iraqi insurgency. And he reveals in vivid detail for the first time a number of important stories of military and intelligence operations by both sides, both successes and failures, and their typically unexpected consequences.

Much has changed in the world since 1979, but Iran and America remain each other's biggest national security nightmares. "The Iran problem" is a razor-sharp briar patch that has claimed its sixth presidential victim in Barack Obama and his administration. The Twilight War adds vital new depth to our understanding of this acute dilemma it is also a thrillingly engrossing read, animated by a healthy irony about human failings in the fog of not-quite war.

  • Rank: #35865 in Books
  • Published on: 2012-07-19
  • Released on: 2012-07-19
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 1.32" h x 6.44" w x 9.50" l, 2.16 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 656 pages

Description #1 by eBay:

general history countries regions asia middle east arabian peninsula general aas all our items our feedback faqs about us contact us item description the twilight war the secret history of america s thirty year conflict with iran ean 978 1594203411 isbn 10 1 594203415 ref baz 1594203415 title the twilight war the secret history of america s thirty year conflict with iran author david crist publisher

Description #2 by eBay - grandeagleretail:

Store Search search Title, ISBN and Author The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran by David Crist Estimated delivery 3-12 business days Format Hardcover Condition Brand New Details ISBN 1594203415 ISBN-13 9781594203411 Title The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran Author David Crist Format Hardcover Pages 638 Publisher Penguin Press Dimensions 6.5 in. x 1.3 in. x 9.5 in. About Us Grand Eagle Retail is the ideal pl

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

The Dispensable Nation
The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat
Vali Nasr (Author)

New!: $28.95 $16.40 (as of 02/24/2013 19:51 PST)

Middle Eastern

Former State Department advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan and bestselling author Vali Nasr delivers a sharp indictment of America's flawed foreign policy and outlines a new relationship with the Muslim world and with new players in the changing Middle East.

In this essential new book, Vali Nasr argues that the Obama administration had a chance to improve its relations with the Middle East, but instead chose to pursue its predecessor's questionable strategies there. Nasr takes readers behind the scenes at the State Department and reveals how the new government's fear of political backlash and the specter of terrorism crippled the efforts of diplomatic giants, like Richard Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton, to boost America's foundering credibility with world leaders. Meanwhile, the true economic threats, China and Russia, were quietly expanding their influence in the region. And a second Arab Spring is brewing-not a hopeful clamor for democracy but rage at the United States for its foreign policy of drones and assassinations. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge of the Middle East and firsthand experience in diplomacy, Nasr offers a powerful reassessment of American foreign policy that directs the country away from its failing relationships in the Middle East (such as with Saudi Arabia) toward more productive, and less costly, partnerships with other foreign allies (such as Turkey). Forcefully persuasive, Vali Nasr's book is a game changer for America as it charts a course in the Muslim world, Asia, and beyond.

  • Rank: #20213 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-04-23
  • Released on: 2013-04-23
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.43 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 320 pages

Description #1 by Barnes & Noble:

Categories: International Relations * General. Contributors: Vali Nasr - Author. Format: Audiobook

Description #2 by Walmart:

The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

Description #3 by Overstock.com:

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