When Arab Spring swept the region, Syria s President Bashar al-Asad thought that he was safe. Over the previous five years, the moderate opposition had been crushed. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, Syria had taken an anti-US stance since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Syrians were used to living under sanctions and being called terrorists. Asad told movie stars Brad and Angelina when they visited Damascus that he did not need personal security, because ordinary Syrians were protecting him. The Syrian president was convinced that Syrians loved him. And not only Syrians. Vogue agreed in its March 2011 puff piece that described Asad's wife as a Rose in the Desert. What of Syrian naysayers? Asad counted on his ruthless and all-seeing mukhabarat to keep them in line. Tackling politics, society, religion, and economy, Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances explores the eleven years of Asad s rule between the clampdown on Damascus Spring in 2001 and the challenge of escalating street protests in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012. Author Carsten Wieland interviewed the major opposition figures year by year over this decade. A valuable complement to the growing body of indigenous reporting (youtube videos, blog commentary), Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances provides context and expert insight that reveals the essential struggle and untold barbarity unfolding here in what Syrian government tourist brochures call the cradle of civilization.

Syria: A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Demascus Spring to Arab Spring

History

Wieland, Carsten

Middle East

Cune Press

Professor Tom Gage portrays eight modern educators and the development of their theories viewed from personal, cultural, and historical perspectives. He links their ideas to those of Fethullah G len, a highly influential educator of today who draws on an entirely different tradition.

Gulen's Dialogue on Education: A Caravanserai of Ideas

Education & Teaching

Gage, Tom

Schools & Teaching

Curse of the Achille Lauro: A Tribute to Lost Souls

Abu al-Abbas was one of Yasser Arafat s top generals. His name is forever linked to an operation in 1985 that sparked an international crisis: the hijacking of an Italian cruise liner named the Achille Lauro and the death of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American tourist. This memoir by the wife of Abu al-Abbas recalls an era of Palestinian resistance, the hard realities of a cause that faced impossible odds, and the irony that the death of a single man should outweigh all arguments of right and wrong. From a preview of Curse of the Achille Lauro: Abu al-Abbas told his wife . . . that his intention was to carry out an honorable operation against the Israeli Army . . . . I wanted them to reach Ashdod: not to fight the passengers on board (the Achille Lauro). (Abu al-Abbas) was to be haunted by the crime for the rest of his life. And when he died mysteriously in US custody in a Baghdad prison camp after America s 2003 invasion, all the world remembered of Al-Abbas was a crippled man called Leon Klinghoffer. No-one cared how an apparently healthy man would die in American hands. - Robert Fisk, The Independent

Reem al-Nimer

Biographies & Memoirs

Learning First in Black and White introduces The Design Code Process ® , an idea-generating system developed by Northwest artist and educator, Fred Griffin, that makes it possible to turn out fresh ideas and great designs on deadline.

Learning First in Black and White: For All Ages--A Complete Course in Visual Composition: The First of Three Books on the Design Code Process

Solvang-Angell, Diane

This book introduces The Design Code ®, an idea-generating system developed by Northwest artist and educator, Fred Griffin. It is a remedy for the artist's equivalent of writer's block, those times when the well of ideas runs dry. This system makes it possible to find fresh ideas and execute great designs on deadline. Through many years of teaching design principles, Griffin found that if students worked first in black and white their grasp of basic design principles was much clearer than if they were dealing with the confusion of colour. Colour, a study unto itself, introduces an element of distraction -- hence the title, "Learning First in Black & White". Each lesson is explained with geometric shapes, followed by illustrations of an apple visually repeating the concepts. At the end of the book is a section that gives tips on how to dig deeper for better ideas. It's an answer to the question, "Where do ideas come from?" The other two books in the series (Tossing Around Ideas and Putting It All Together) reinforce the concepts covered in the first book. The Design Code® series provides an in-depth course in art composition and idea-generation. The Design Code® is to the visual arts what music theory is to music -- a type of DNA for visual composition. For instructors, it's educational content that can work for students of any age. Defined and refined over many years of classroom testing, The Design Code® is the brainchild of Northwest artist and educator Fred Griffin whose interest in the logical side of art grew during his student days at the influential Chouinard Art Institute of Los Angeles (now California Institute of the Arts). The Design Code ® is for two types of readers: those with an understanding of design and experience in the field -- and those with interest and entry level skills who have never studied design. For experienced artists and designers, this book is a tool to lift oneself out of a creative dry spell. For those who are new to thinking to design, it also serves as a primer in the basics of composition. For either type of reader, these are books that you can return to again and again for inspiration and practical guidance.

Learning First in Black & White: A Comprehensive Course in Art Composition for Instructors & Students

Diane Solvang-Angell

A dispatch from the front lines of the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis. Meet the children, women, and men who have given up untenable lives in Syrian conflict zones for the risk of travel as refugees, to Greece. Editors Bill Dienst, MD and Madi Williamson and their contributors most of whom have served on the ground with the ngo SCM Medical report from the refugee camps of Greece on the crisis of refugees, primarily Syrian refugees, who have fled the violence and are now caught in military style detention camps with no end in sight.

Leaving Syria: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Refugee Crisis in Greece

Bill Dienst MD

Madison Williamson

Little Fires

Literature & Fiction

Bentley, Beth

Poetry

Kisses from a Distance is a memoir that was conceived after the death of the author's mother and the discovery of a cache of over 200 letters in her personal effects. The correspondence spanned some sixty-five years and was mainly from family and friends in her native Lebanon. The discovery of the letters stimulated Mr. Ellis' memories and he began a journey to verify the truth of the stories he had heard as a youth. After several trips to the land of his ancestors, visiting with relatives on both sides of his genealogy, trips to libraries, scouring archives, and reading and collecting obscure books, he unearthed many historical facts that are unknown to the general public. The author was often surprised at what he learned and each time he thought the storyline was set it would take a different twist or turn. The tale begins with the virtual kidnapping--and ultimate marriage--of the author's grandmother from a remote Lebanese convent in 1895. It chronicles that unhappy marriage through the birth of children, including the author's mother, family financial difficulties, and the emigration of the author's grandfather to the New World. The left behind family suffers through the First World War, the accommodations that had to be made due to the oppressive rule of their Ottoman masters, starvation, rampant disease, natural disasters, and death. Mr. Ellis intersperses his travels in the narrative with the history of the period as it affected the Lebanese people in general and his relatives in particular. The journey spanned nearly eight years before the manuscript was finally completed. Comprehensive written and oral records contributed to making this work into an engaging story of general interest. It ushers the reader into a world of intimate thoughts and actions, oftentimes in the characters' own words.

Kisses from a Distance

Ellis, Raff

Community & Culture

"Kissess from a Distance" chronicles a Lebanese immigrant experience - based on a cache of more than 200 letters discovered after the death of the author's mother. The tale begins with the kidnapping of the author's grandmother from a remote convent in 1895. It chronicles her subsequent unhappy marriage and her husband's tragic attempt to find success in America. Their particular story plays out against the struggle and suffering of the lebanese people through years of oppressive Ottoman rule and the ravages of World War I. Employing traditional lebanese proverbs and folk tales, "Kisses from a Distance" weaves the author's extensive research and visits to Lebanon into a compelling narrative.

Kisses From a Distance (Bridge Between Cultures Series)

Tune up your knowledge of the Arab and Muslim worlds with this easy to read text. The Arab-American Handbook contains useful reference material and comment by a wide variety of participants and observers. The book includes: a thumbnail history; the essentials of Islam; social insights &amp; cultural norms. The perfect tool for : teachers, employers, travelers, law enforcement. Government workers and the general public will find that they can quickly penetrate the stereotypes and misconceptions to appreciate the tenor and nuance of Arab and Muslim life. Without a better grasp of this subject, the citizens of liberal democracies are unsafe at home and at a disadvantage in the global competition for hearts and minds.

The Arab-American Handbook: A Guide to the Arab, Arab-American & Muslim Worlds (Bridge Between the Cultures)

Shora, Nawar

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Books by Cune Press