As the dreadful reality of the Coalition's defeat in Iraq begins to sink in, one question dominates Washington and London: why? In this controversial new book, award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele provides a stark and arresting answer: Bush and Blair were defeated from the day they decided to occupy the country. Iraq had enough of foreign armies. Steele describes the memories of centuries of humiliations that have scarred the Iraqi national psyche, creating a powerful and deeply felt nationalism. Drawing his unique access to senior Western policymakers, Steele shows how the key players in the occupying coalition totally failed to inform themselves about this smouldering backhistory of resentment and suspicion. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with ordinary Iraqis, Steele shows for the first time how the staging posts of the conflict so familiar to Western newspaper readers were seen by the Iraqis themselves.Blending vivid reportage, informed analysis and sweeping historical narrative, "Defeat" is the definitive anatomy of an historic catastrophe.

Defeat

History

Jonathan Steele

Asia

I B Tauris Academic

Israel's fateful decisions

Politics & Social Sciences

Harkabi, Yehoshafat

Politics & Government

How can justice for women be achieved in an Islamic society? Through a series of lively interviews with clerics in the Iranian religious centre of Qom, Ziba Mir-Hosseini explores the issue of gender with Islamic jurisprudence and examines how clerics today perpetuate and modify these notions. Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the introduction of religious Sharia'a law relating to gender and the family, women's rights in Iran suffered a major setback. However, as Iran's leaders have faced the social realities of women's lives and aspirations, positive changes have gradually come about especially in the context of the recent liberalization in the country. Unique in its approach and its subject matter, the book relates Mir-Hosseini's position, as a Mulsim woman and a social anthropologist educated and working in the West, with Shi'I Muslim thinkers of various backgrounds and views. In the literature on women in Islam, there is no account of such a face-to-face encounter, either between religion and gender politics or between the two genders.

Islam and Gender : The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran

Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Social Sciences

Living Religions: An Encyclopaedia of the World's Faiths

Luyster, Mary

Fascinated by the nature of the Jewish identity, Doeblin, the author of "Berlin Alexanderplatz", a non-practising Jew in Berlin in the 1920s, decided to visit Poland to try to discover his Jewish roots. This book is a record of that journey. He describes Polish-Jewish language and tradition, the striking costumes and colourful markets, and the terrible poverty that surrounded everything. The book is both a personal investigation into ancestry and a portrait of a unique society on the eve of its destruction.

Journey to Poland

Döblin, Alfred

Biographies & Memoirs

The "Leopards" were an elite group of aristocrats who played out their extravagant lives in Sicily until the dawn of the 20th century. This book offers a visual tribute to their way of life.

Sicily: Land of the Leopard Princes

Gérard Gefen

Rome - imperial city, fountain-head of the Christian world and site of some of the world's most amazing ecclesiastical architecture. This book takes the reader on a journey through Rome's most important churches. 180 cathedrals, churches and chapels are featured, from grand basilicas to intimate chapels. In the process, the book provides a dramatic portrayal of the history of Christianity - from its earlier days, its upheaval and schisms, to the glories of the Renaissance and beyond.

Churches of Rome

Pierre Grimal

Arts & Photography

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Good, A very good, clean and sound copy in black cloth boards, gilt title on spine with a good dust jacket. Illustrated in full-colour with many plans and diagrams.

Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans

Taylor, Jane.

Ancient Civilizations

From "The Next Generation" and "The X-Files", to "Farscape" and "Enterprise", sci-fi television series in the US have multiplied since the 1980s. Jan Johnson-Smith shows how, in line with national political upheavals, this vibrant and perplexing genre set about expanding the myth of the Western frontier into deep space. She looks at the "sense of wonder" or sublime that infuses much Frontier art and science fiction, and traces a possible historical precedent to the genre in the fabulous and heroic journeys of the Classical epic. She discusses narrative styles and their influences, from the overarching narrative of "Babylon 5" to the episodic formula of "The Outer Limits", considers how experimental series such as "Twin Peaks" challenge conventional structures, and how and why sci-fi television has adopted new technologies. She also explores the juxtaposition of arcane language and technological jargon in modern American sci-fi television, revealing the extraordinarily alien, yet curiously familiar arena it creates.

American Science Fiction TV : Star Trek', 'Stargate' and Beyond

Jan Johnson-Smith

Science Fiction & Fantasy

This text offers a definitive account of Zionism. The term "Zionism" was first coined at the end of the 19th century, but the idea long reflected the misery of Jewish existence in central and eastern Europe, and the longing for the ancient homeland. Updated, and with a new preface, Walter Laqueur's comprehensive history begins with a discussion of the background of Zionism since the French Revolution, covers the many decades of Zionist activities worldwide, and ends with the establishment of the state of Israel.

The History of Zionism

Walter, Laqueur

World

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