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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorIn the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Michela Wrong · 353 pages
Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace l
A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
Howard W. French · 280 pages
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
Elaine Sciolino · 416 pages
"Like the mirror mosaics found in Iran's royal palaces and religious shrines, there is more to the whole of the country than the fragments revealed to outsiders. Persian Mirrors captures this elusive Iran. Sciolino paints in astonishing detail and rich color the surprising inner life of this country, where a great battle is raging, not for control over territory but for the soul of the nation."--B
Salvador
Joan Didion · 108 pages
"Previously published in ... The New York review of books in October 1982." Discusses the situation of anarchy and terrorism in El Salvador as of 1982.
China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power
Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn · 510 pages
"When China wakes, it will shake the world," Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked. That moment is now at hand. And in this book Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the Pulitzer Prize winning Beijing correspondents of The New York Times, bring to life the people, the politics, and the paradoxes of China as never before. China Wakes combines groundbreaking reportage with the authors' personal account
The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday
Neil MacFarquhar · 393 pages
Since his boyhood in Qadhafi's Libya, Neil MacFarquhar has developed a counterintuitive sense that the Middle East, despite all the bloodshed in its recent history, is a place of warmth, humanity, and generous eccentricity. In this book, he introduces a cross-section of unsung, dynamic men and women pioneering political and social change. There is the Kuwaiti sex therapist in a leather suit with m
North Korea Undercover: Inside the World's Most Secret State
John Sweeney · 338 pages
"North Korea is like no other tyranny on earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and big brother is always watching: it is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney is one of the few foreign journalists to have witnessed the devastating reality of life in the controversial and isolated nation of North Korea, having entered the countr
And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
Richard Engel · 241 pages
"Based on two decades of reporting, NBC's chief foreign correspondent's riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up-close--sometimes dangerously so. When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab new
Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World
Robin Wright · 307 pages
Written by a veteran reporter, this is an up close portrait of the fierce struggle between moderates and extremists taking place within the Islamic world today. Why don't Muslims challenge the violent extremists among them? Well, they do. Here she cites the clerics, comedians, and rappers who challenge al Qaeda violence; the women who are launching liberation movements; and the former jihadists wh
Walking With The Comrades
Arundhati Roy · 182 pages
In early 2010, Roy traveled into the forests of Central India, homeland to millions of indigenous people, dreamland to some of the world's biggest mining corporations. The result is this... report from the heart of an unfolding revolution.
The Yellow Wind: With a New Afterword by the Author
David Grossman · 228 pages
An account of the author's three month journey on the West Bank of the Jordan River and his awareness of the moral dilemmas inherent in the Palestinian predicament.
The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster
Jonathan M. Katz · 320 pages
Published to glowing reviews, The Big Truck That Went By is a crucial look at a signal failure of international aid. Jonathan M. Katz was the only full-time American news correspondent in Haiti on January 12, 2010, when the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck the island nation. In this visceral first-hand account, Katz takes readers inside the terror of that da
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire
Tim Schwab · 496 pages
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Michael Lewis · 220 pages
As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wante
Freedom Next Time
John Pilger · 364 pages
The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan
Christina Lamb · 352 pages
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
Raja Shehadeh · 211 pages
"Provides a rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine"--Jimmy Carter (from cover).
Descent into Chaos: The United States & the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid · 484 pages
The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.Ahmed Rashid is "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" (Christopher Hitchens). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate.His book Taliban first introduce
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
Eliza Griswold · 322 pages
Award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in "The Tenth Parallel" show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
Hooman Majd · 344 pages
A revealing look at Iran by an American journalist with an insider's access behind Persian wallsThe grandson of an eminent ayatollah and the son of an Iranian diplomat, now an American citizen, Hooman Majd is, in a way, both 100 percent Iranian and 100 percent American, combining an insider's knowledge of how Iran works with a remarkable ability to explain its history and its quirks to Western rea
The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War
Fred Kaplan · 413 pages
This book describes the attempt to reform the culture of the US Armed Forces in the face of the challenges of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from a cold war machinery focussed on major battles against a massive enemy towards the flexible dominance over an elusive, ingrained and invisible one.
The Commanders
Bob Woodward · 400 pages
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
David K. Shipler · 596 pages
Examines the relationships, mutual images, and stereotypes that have evolved between Arabs and Jews in Israel and in territorities under Israeli control.
Poverty, by America
Matthew Desmond · 343 pages