Based on extensive scholarship, an innovative biography of the central text of Islam Over a billion copies of the Qur`an exist, yet it remains an enigma. Its classical Arabic language resists simple translation, and its non-linear style of abstract musings defies categorization. Moreover, those who champion its sanctity and compete to claim its mantle offer widely diverging interpretations of its core message at times with explosive results. Building...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and religious scholar redirects his lifelong focus on Christianity and takes an open-minded look at the Qur'an, finding the original meaning of the sacred text and showing numerous parallels between it and the Old and New Testaments.

"The bestselling author of The Secretary tells the gripping story of the real roots of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Middle East in the 1979 Iran Revolution that changed the region forever."-- Provided by publisher. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. Ghattas weaves together history, geopolitics, and culture to show how the 1979 Iranian revolution-- fueled by...

Yasmeen has a wonderful time celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with her family and friends.

Since 9/11, more than three hundred Americans—born and raised in Minnesota, Alabama, New Jersey, and elsewhere—have been indicted or convicted of terrorism charges. Some have taken the fight abroad: an American was among those who planned the attacks in Mumbai, and more than eighty U.S. citizens have been charged with ISIS-related crimes. Others have acted on American soil, as with the attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, and in San Bernardino....

"Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters,...

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In the second of three volumes of this magnificently illustrated cultural history, the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews, Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish people from 1492 through the end of nineteenth century. Simon Schama’s great project continues and the Jewish story is woven into the fabric of humanity. Their search for a home where a distinctive religion and culture could be nourished without being marginalized...

"Ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker recall the path terror in the Middle East has taken from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS. With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that...

Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land. Bahar's mother,...