This is a powerful and insightful narrative of a journey - once violently interrupted and here resumed - through one of the most compelling regions on earth. In the late 1980s, Charles Glass set out on a literary and spiritual ramble from Alexandretta in southern Turkey for Aqaba, the first Turkish garrison conquered in 1917 by T.E. Lawrence and the tribal irregulars of the Arab revolt. He never reached his destination: his journey came to a brutal halt when he was kidnapped and held hostage for three months, a story told in his previous book, "Tribes with Flags". Now he reverses the journey, marching north along the path of the Levant's last successful invasion, by the Arabs of the Hejaz and Britain in 1917, since which time the region has been divided into Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. He traverses the Jordanian desert to the Iraqi border with Bedouin guides, explores modern Israel and revisits the scene of his captivity, confronting the men who kidnapped him. He visits the Israeli settlements and the Arab towns on whose land the settlements were constructed; he speaks to Israeli conscripts and Palestinian demonstrators, to old family chieftains and the Israeli Sabra aristocracy, to priests, rabbis and mullahs, politicians and assassins, torturers and tortured. Glass believes that the only way to understand this complex region of the world, which so many different peoples desire to possess so intensely, it is to walk its ancient paths, listen to its people, explore its ruins, eat its food and examine its manuscripts. The result is an exceptionally interesting book, whose beautifully lucid prose and sophisticated grasp of the interpenetration of past and future compel one's delighted attention at all times.

The Tribes Triumphant: Return Journey to the Middle East

Travel

Charles Glass

Asia

Harpercollins

The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II

Penguin??Books

Acclaimed journalist Charlie Glass looks to the American expatriate experience of Nazi-occupied Paris to reveal a fascinating forgotten history of the greatest generation. In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season, from the spring of 1940 to liberation in the summer of 1944, as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. Glass's discovery of letters, diaries, war documents, and police files reveals as never before how Americans were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration, and courage. Artists, writers, scientists, playboys, musicians, cultural mandarins, and ordinary businessmen-all were swept up in extraordinary circumstances and tested as few Americans before or since. Charles Bedaux, a French-born, naturalized American millionaire, determined his alliances as a businessman first, a decision that would ultimately make him an enemy to all. Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun was torn by family ties to President Roosevelt and the Vichy government, but her fiercest loyalty was to her beloved American Library of Paris. Sylvia Beach attempted to run her famous English-language bookshop, Shakespeare &amp; Company, while helping her Jewish friends and her colleagues in the Resistance. Dr. Sumner Jackson, wartime chief surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, risked his life aiding Allied soldiers to escape to Britain and resisting the occupier from the first day. These stories and others come together to create a unique portrait of an eccentric, original, diverse American community. Charles Glass has written an exciting, fast-paced, and elegant account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's dangerous occupation years. For four hard years, from the summer of 1940 until U.S. troops liberated Paris in August 1944, Americans were intimately caught up in the city's fate. Americans in Paris is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others, and unparalleled bravery by a few.

Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation (Library Edition)

History

Europe

Blackstone Audiobooks

Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation

Acclaimed journalist Charles Glass looks to the American expatriate experience of Nazi-occupied Paris to reveal a fascinating forgotten history of the greatest generation. In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. Glass' discovery of letters, diaries, war documents, and police files reveals as never before how Americans were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration, and courage. Artists, writers, scientists, playboys, musicians, cultural mandarins, and ordinary businessmen--all were swept up in extraordinary circumstances and tested as few Americans before or since. These stories come together to create a unique portrait of an eccentric, original, and diverse American community. Charles Glass has written an exciting, fast-paced, and elegant account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's dangerous occupation years. For four hard years, from the summer of 1940 until US troops liberated Paris in August 1944, Americans were intimately caught up in the city's fate. Americans in Paris is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others, and unparalleled bravery by a few.

Since its commencement in the upsurge of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian civil war has claimed in excess of 200,000 lives, with an estimated eight million Syrians, more than a third of the country's population, forced to flee their homes. A stalemate now exists in the country, with the government of Bashar al-Assad maintaining its grip on most of the cities in the west while large swathes of the countryside in the north and east are under the control of the Islamic fundamentalist groups ISIS and the Nusra Front.The caliphate announced by ISIS in the summer of 2014 occupies some 35 percent of the country as well as vast territory across the border in Iraq. The nuances of this conflict have never been well understood in the West, least of all, it seems, by governments in the US and Europe, who, anticipating Assad's sudden departure, made it a condition of any negotiated settlement. The consequences of that miscalculation, Charles Glass contends in this illuminating and concise survey, have contributed greatly to the unfolding disaster that we witness today.Glass has reported extensively from the Middle East and travelled frequently in Syria over several decades. Here he melds together reportage, analysis, and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict, situating it clearly in the overall crisis of the region. His voice, elegant and concise, humane and richly informed, is a vital antidote to the sloganizing that shapes so much commentary and policy concerning the civil war.

Syria Burning

Middle East

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Soldiers Don't Go Mad

Soldiers Dont Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry and Mental Illness During the First World War

Bedford Square Publishers

The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cacti

Clive Innes

Grange Books

Identifying Cacti

Silverdale Books

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Books by Charles Glass