If the Oceans Were Ink

Author: Carla Power
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805098240
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Hailed by The Washington Post as “mandatory reading,” and praised by Fareed Zakaria as “intelligent, compassionate, and revealing,” a powerful journey to help bridge one of the greatest divides shaping our world today. If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship-between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh-had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names. Both knew that a close look at the Quran would reveal a faith that preached peace and not mass murder; respect for women and not oppression. And so they embarked on a yearlong journey through the controversial text. A journalist who grew up in the Midwest and the Middle East, Power offers her unique vantage point on the Quran's most provocative verses as she debates with Akram at cafes, family gatherings, and packed lecture halls, conversations filled with both good humor and powerful insights. Their story takes them to madrasas in India and pilgrimage sites in Mecca, as they encounter politicians and jihadis, feminist activists and conservative scholars. Armed with a new understanding of each other's worldviews, Power and Akram offer eye-opening perspectives, destroy long-held myths, and reveal startling connections between worlds that have seemed hopelessly divided for far too long. Praise for If the Oceans Were Ink “A vibrant tale of a friendship.... If the Oceans Were Ink is a welcome and nuanced look at Islam [and] goes a long way toward combating the dehumanizing stereotypes of Muslims that are all too common.... If the Oceans Were Ink should be mandatory reading for the 52 percent of Americans who admit to not knowing enough about Muslims.”—The Washington Post “For all those who wonder what Islam says about war and peace, men and women, Jews and gentiles, this is the book to read. It is a conversation among well-meaning friends—intelligent, compassionate, and revealing—the kind that needs to be taking place around the world.”—Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World “Carla Power’s intimate portrait of the Quran, told with nuance and great elegance, captures the extraordinary, living debate over the Muslim holy book’s very essence. A spirited, compelling read.”—Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad “Unique, masterful, and deeply engaging. Carla Power takes the reader on an extraordinary journey in interfaith understanding as she debates and discovers the Quran’s message, meaning, and values on peace and violence, gender and veiling, religious pluralism and tolerance.”—John L. Esposito, University Professor and Professor of Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, and author of The Future of Islam “A thoughtful, provocative, intelligent book.”—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds Of Paradise and The Language of Baklava

Home, Land, Security

Author: Carla Power
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525510575
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A “provocative and deeply reported look into the emerging field of deradicalization” (Esquire), told through the stories of former militants and the people working to bring them back into society What are the roots of radicalism? Journalist Carla Power came to this question well before the January 6, 2021, attack in Washington, D.C., turned our country’s attention to the problem of domestic radicalization. Her entry point was a different wave of radical panic—the way populists and pundits encouraged us to see the young people who joined ISIS or other terrorist organizations as simple monsters. Power wanted to chip away at the stereotypes by focusing not on what these young people had done but why: What drew them into militancy? What visions of the world—of home, of land, of security for themselves and the people they loved—shifted their thinking toward radical beliefs? And what visions of the world might bring them back to society? Power begins her journey by talking to the mothers of young men who’d joined ISIS in the UK and Canada; from there, she travels around the world in search of societies that are finding new and innovative ways to rehabilitate former extremists. We meet an American judge who has staked his career on finding new ways to handle terrorist suspects, a Pakistani woman running a game-changing school for former child soldiers, a radicalized Somali American who learns through literature to see beyond his Manichean beliefs, and a former neo-Nazi who now helps disarm white supremacists. Along the way Power gleans lessons that get her closer to answering the true question at the heart of her pursuit: Can we find a way to live together? An eye-opening, page-turning investigation, Home, Land, Security speaks to the rise of division and radicalization in all forms, both at home and abroad. In this richly reported and deeply human account, Carla Power offers new ways to overcome the rising tides of extremism, one human at a time.

If All the Seas Were Ink

Author: Ilana Kurshan
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250121272
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
**WINNER of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the 2018 Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature** **2018 Natan Book Award Finalist** **Finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies ** The Wall Street Journal: "There is humor and heartbreak in these pages...Ms. Kurshan immerses herself in the demands of daily Talmud study and allows the words of ancient scholars to transform the patterns of her own life." The Jewish Standard:“Brilliant, beautifully written, sensitive, original." The Jerusalem Post:"A beautiful and inspiring book. Both religious and secular readers will find themselves immensely moved by [Kurshan's] personal story.” American Jewish World: “So engrossing I hardly could put it down.” At the age of twenty-seven, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce,Ilana Kurshan joined the world’s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for“daily page” of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about six hundredyears. Her story is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriageand motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turningpage after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tourof the Talmud. For people of the book—both Jewish and non-Jewish—If All theSeas Were Ink is a celebration of learning, through literature, how to fall in loveonce again.

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

Author: Jennifer Steil
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307715876
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
"I had no idea how to find my way around this medieval city. It was getting dark. I was tired. I didn’t speak Arabic. I was a little frightened. But hadn’t I battled scorpions in the wilds of Costa Rica and prevailed? Hadn’t I survived fainting in a San José brothel? Hadn’t I once arrived in Ireland with only $10 in my pocket and made it last two weeks? Surely I could handle a walk through an unfamiliar town. So I took a breath, tightened the black scarf around my hair, and headed out to take my first solitary steps through Sana’a."—from The Woman Who Fell From The Sky In a world fraught with suspicion between the Middle East and the West, it's hard to believe that one of the most influential newspapers in Yemen—the desperately poor, ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, which has made has made international headlines for being a terrorist breeding ground—would be handed over to an agnostic, Campari-drinking, single woman from Manhattan who had never set foot in the Middle East. Yet this is exactly what happened to journalist, Jennifer Steil. Restless in her career and her life, Jennifer, a gregarious, liberal New Yorker, initially accepts a short-term opportunity in 2006 to teach a journalism class to the staff of The Yemen Observer in Sana'a, the beautiful, ancient, and very conservative capital of Yemen. Seduced by the eager reporters and the challenging prospect of teaching a free speech model of journalism there, she extends her stay to a year as the paper's editor-in-chief. But she is quickly confronted with the realities of Yemen—and their surprising advantages. In teaching the basics of fair and balanced journalism to a staff that included plagiarists and polemicists, she falls in love with her career again. In confronting the blatant mistreatment and strict governance of women by their male counterparts, she learns to appreciate the strength of Arab women in the workplace. And in forging surprisingly deep friendships with women and men whose traditions and beliefs are in total opposition to her own, she learns a cultural appreciation she never could have predicted. What’s more, she just so happens to meet the love of her life. With exuberance and bravery, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky offers a rare, intimate, and often surprising look at the role of the media in Muslim culture and a fascinating cultural tour of Yemen, one of the most enigmatic countries in the world.

Heart: A History

Author: Sandeep Jauhar
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717001
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between key historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ. He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams, the African American doctor who performed the world’s first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago. We meet C. Walton Lillehei, who connected a patient’s circulatory system to a healthy donor’s, paving the way for the heart-lung machine. And we encounter Wilson Greatbatch, who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker—by accident. Jauhar deftly braids these tales of discovery, hubris, and sorrow with moving accounts of his family’s history of heart ailments and the patients he’s treated over many years. He also confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent. Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.

Oceans of Fire

Author: Christine Feehan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101146931
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan tells the story of Abigail Drake, one of seven elementally gifted sisters who are fated to find great love. As the third daughter in a magical bloodline, Abigail Drake was born with a mystical affinity for water, and possessed a particularly strong bond with dolphins. She spent her entire life studying them, learning from them, and swimming among them in the waters off her hometown of Sea Haven... Until the day Abby witnessed a cold-blooded murder on shore, and found herself fleeing for her life—right into the arms of Alexsandr Volstov. He’s an Interpol agent on the trail of stolen Russian antiquities, a relentless man who gets what he goes after—and the man who broke Abby’s heart. But he isn’t going to let the only woman he ever loved be placed in harm’s way—or slip away from his embrace.

The Outlaw Ocean

Author: Ian Urbina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451492951
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless, and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely. Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

The Leadership of Muhammad

Author: John Adair
Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers
ISBN: 0749461160
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
The Leadership of Muhammad is a very personal study of the life-story and leadership skills of the Prophet. John Adair served with a Bedouin regiment in the Arab Legion and this story is full of fascinating detail of desert life and Bedouin beliefs. A business book that crosses boundaries it highlights the key leadership skills displayed by Muhammad and allows you to share in his wisdom. John Adair weaves the story of Muhammad's life together with aspects of Bedouin culture and ancient proverbs to provide key points for leaders and aspiring leaders. He discusses tribal leadership and essential attributes such as integrity, moral authority and humility. Learning and leadership go hand in hand. You are not born a leader, but you can become one and it is never too late to learn. John Adair's study or Muhammad and the tribal tradition of leadership is an essential addtion to the leadership debate.

American Dervish

Author: Ayad Akhtar
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316192821
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
From the author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced, a stirring and explosive novel about an American Muslim family in Wisconsin struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world. Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes. American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life.

The World is Blue

Author: Sylvia A. Earle
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426205414
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
"... [L]egendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately. A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how the past 50 years of destructive--and ever accelerating--oceanic change threaten the very existence of life on Earth." -- back cover.