Books - Scholarly & Otherwise
Note: Book titles are linked to Amazon.com only because Amazon provides thumbnail descriptions of books. Many of these books also are available through the Maine State Library system, either at your local library or through inter-library loan. Click here for the Minerva catalog. At "Select Library," click on =ALL MINERVA LOCATIONS= to check availability throughout the state.
The list of "scholarly, reliable books" prepared by Ed Knox when the group first met early in 2013 can be found by clicking here. All those titles are also included in the list below.
The list of "scholarly, reliable books" prepared by Ed Knox when the group first met early in 2013 can be found by clicking here. All those titles are also included in the list below.
- Acemoglu, Daron & Robinson, James, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, 2013
- Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department, 1987
- Ackerman, Diane, The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us
- Albright, Madeleine, Fascism: A Warning, 2018
- Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2012
- Allison, Graham, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, 2017
- Al Shihabi, Ali, The Saudi Kingdom: Between the Jihadi Hammer and the Iranian Anvil, 2015
- Alyokhina, Maria, Riot Days, 2017
- Applebaum, Anne, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 2017
- Armstrong, Karen, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, 2014
- Armstrong, Karen, Islam: A Short History, 2000
- Armstrong, Karen, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time, 2006
- Asimov, Isaac, The Near East: 10,000 Years of History, 1968
- Atkinson, Rick, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (The Liberation Trilogy, Volume I), 2002
- Atkinson, Rick, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy, Volume II), 2007
- Atkinson, Rick, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy, Volume III), 2013
- Atwan, Abdel Bari, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, 2015
- Bacevich, Andrew J., The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, 2020
- Bacevich, Andrew J., America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, 2016
- Bacevich, Andrew, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (American Empire Project), 2013
- Bacevich, Andrew J., The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. 1st edn. New York, NY: Holt Paperbacks, 2009.
- Bacevich, Andrew, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, 2010
- Barker, Kim, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2012
- Bazelon, Emily, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, 2019
- Bearden, Milt, The Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan, 1998
- Bellah, Robert N., et al, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, 1985
- Bergen, Peter, United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists, 2016
- Bergman, Ronen, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, 2018
- Blumenthal, Max, The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump, 2019
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison, c. 1945, updated 1997
- Bronowski, J., The Ascent of Man, 1973
- Brautigam, Deborah, The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, 2010
- Brautigam, Deborah, Will China Feed Africa?, 2015
- Brooks, David, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, 2019
- Brooks, Geraldine, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, 1995
- Brooks, Geraldine, People of the Book: A novel, 2008
- Carey, Kevin, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, 2015
- Chang, Gordon H. & Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, 2019
- Chang, Gordon H., Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 2019
- Chayes, Sarah, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, 2015
- Clark, Anna, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy, 2018
- Clark, Bruce, Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, 2006
- Cleveland, William L., A History of the Modern Middle East. 3rd edn. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2004.
- Cole, Juan, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires, 2018
- Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 1899
- Craig, Ryan, College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education, 2015
- Crile, George, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Time, 2003
- Dabashi, Hamid, Iran: A People Interrupted, The New Press, 2007
- Dalton, Toby, Kassenova, Togzhan & Williams, Lauryn, Perspectives on the Evolving Nuclear Order, 2016
- Dangerfield, George, The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1935
- Davies, William, Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason, 2019
- de Bernières, Louis, Birds Without Wings, 2004 - a brilliant novel about Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire
- Deshaies, Denise, The French-Canadians of Brunswick, Maine, 2003 - a monograph available at Curtis Memorial Library
- Diamandis, Peter H. & Kotler, Steven, Abundance, 2014
- Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 2005
- Dodge, Toby, Inventing Iraq : the failure of nation-building and a history denied. New York : Columbia University Press, 2003.
- Doran, Michael, Ike's Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East, 2016
- Dubus III, Andre, House of Sand and Fog, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999
- Durrell, Lawrence, Bitter Lemons, 1957
- Engel, Richard, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East, 2016
- Fair, Eric, Consequence: A Memoir, 2016
- Farmian, Sattareh Farman, Daughter of Persia: A Woman's Journey from Her Father's Harem Through the Islamic Revolution, 1992
- Finch, Janet, The Revolution of Marina M. (A Novel), 2017
- Fisher, Roger & Uhry, William L., Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 2011
- French, Howard W., Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, 2017
- Gardner, Howard, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1983
- Gelvin, James, The modern Middle East: a history. New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Geniesse, Jane Fletcher, Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark, 1999
- Gerges, Fawaz, The far enemy: why Jihad went global. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Gosselin, Henry, Clement Gosselin: George Washington's French Canadian Spy, 1998 - an historical novel available at Curtis Memorial Library
- Gessen, Masha, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, 2017
- Greer, Colin, The Great School Legend: a Revisionist Interpretation of American Public Education, 1972
- Haass, Richard N., Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order. New York, NY : Basic Books, 2013
- Hahn, Steven, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, 2016
- Hanna-Attisha, Mona, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City, 2018
- Hastings, Michael, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan, 2012
- Hayden, Michael V., Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, 2016
- Hayes, Chris, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, 2012
- Herzl, Theodor, The Jewish State, 1989 reprint of original 1897 publication
- Hessler, Peter, Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip, 2011
- Hiro, Dilip, After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World, 2010
- Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, 1998
- Holloway, Richard, A Little History of Religion, 2016
- Hourani, Albert, A history of the Arab peoples. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.
- Humes, Edward, Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation, 2016
- Hussey, Andrew, The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs, 2014
- Ismail, Ismail Fahd, The Old Woman and the River, 2019
- Johnson, Chalmers, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project), 2005
- Junger, Sebastian, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, 2016
- Kamrava, Mehran, A Concise History of Revolution, 2019
- Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam: A History, Penguin, 1997
- Kashua, Sayed & Shlesinger, Miriam, Dancing Arabs, 2004
- Kasparov, Garry, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, 2015
- Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.
- Kellogg, Elijah, Good Old Times, 1877
- Kelly, Walt, Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us, 1987
- Kennedy, Hugh. When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. New York: Perseus Books, 2006.
- Kepel, Gilles. Jihad : the trail of political Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.
- Kerr, Malcolm H., The Arab Cold War: Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970, 1971
- Khalidi, Rashid. Resurrecting Empire : western footprints and America’s perilous path in the Middle East. Boston : Beacon Press, 2004
- Kidder, Tracy, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, 2009
- Kidder, Tracy, Strength in What Remains, 2010
- Kimmage, Ann, An Un-American Childhood: A Young Woman's Secret Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 1996
- Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, 2003
- Kinzer, Stephen, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, 2013
- Kissinger, Henry, World Order, 2014
- Klein, Ruth Bouchard, Je Me Souviens, 2014 - about a French-Canadian family in Brunswick
- Knox, D. Edward, The making of a new Eastern Question: British Palestine policy and the origins of Israel, 1917-1925. Catholic University of America Press, 1981.
- Kotkin, Stephen, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, 2017
- Kremmer, Christopher, The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes, 2002
- Lambreth, Clifton, Return to Greatness: Driving the American Dream, 2010
- Langer, Walter C., The Mind of Adolf Hitler, 1972
- le Carré, John, Agent Running in the Field: A Novel, 2019
- Lebovitch, Mark, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital, 2013
- Lessig, Lawrence, They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, 2019
- Lester, Toby, The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America, 2009
- Leverett, Flynt & Leverett, Hillary Mann, Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2013
- Lévy, Bernard-Henri, The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World, 2019
- Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years , 1996
- Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, 2001
- Lewis, Michael, The Fifth Risk, 2018
- Lilienthal, Alfred M., There Goes the Middle East, 1957
- Lourie, Richard, Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash, 2017
- Lovell, Mary S. A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby, 1995
- Lustgarten, Abraham, China's Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, 2008
- Lynch, Marc, The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East, 2016
- Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, 1513 (first published in 1532)
- Macintyre, Ben, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, 2016
- Mackenzie, G. Calvin & Weisbrot, Robert, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s, Penguin, 2008
- MacLean, Fitzroy, A Person from England and Other Travellers, 1959
- MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York, NY: Random House, 2001. (especially Part Seven: "Setting the Middle East Alight."
- Mahfouz, Naguib, Adrift on the Nile, 1993
- Naguib Mahfouz is a prolific author of fiction set in the Middle East
- Mantel, Hilary , Wolf Hall, 2009 - historical fiction, a reimagining of life under Henry VIII
- Manwaring, Max G., The Complexity of Modern Asymmetric Warfare, 2012
- Manwaring, Max G., et al, The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, 2003
- Marlantes, Karl, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010
- Marr, Phebe. The modern history of Iraq. 2nd ed. Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2004.
- Mattis, James & West, Bing, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, 2019
- Mayer, Jane, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 2016
- Mazarr, Michael J., Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy, 2019
- McAlister, Melani. Epic encounters : culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001.
- McCardle, Patricia Farishta, 2011
- McCullough, David, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, 2019
- McEvedy, Colin - Wikipedia bio and list of publications
- McEvedy, Colin & Woodcock, John, The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History: Revised Edition, 2003
- Mickiewicz, Ellen, No Illusions: The Voices of Russia’s Future Leaders, 2014
- Miller, Greg, The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy, 2018
- Milton, Giles, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat, 2017
- Mitchell, George, The Negotiator: A Memoir, 2015
- Moaveni, Azadeh Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran, 2005
- Murad, Nora Lester & Danna Masad, Rest in My Shade: A Poem About Roots, 2019
- Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, 2003
- Neff, Donald, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East, 1983
- Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, 1932 (1960 paperback)
- O'Connell, Jack, King’s Counsel: A Memoir Of War, Espionage, And Diplomacy In The Middle East, 2011
- Osnos, Evan, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, 2014
- Ostrovsky, Victor & Hoy, Claire, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, 1990
- Ostrovsky, Arkady, The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War, 2015
- O'Toole, Fintan, The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism, 2019
- Packer, George, The assassins’ gate: America in Iraq. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
- Eliot Pattison is the author of a series of mysteries about Tibet
- Perry, William J., My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, 2015
- Philbrick, Nathaniel, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, 2006
- Pisani, Elizabeth, Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation, 2014
- Polakow-Suransky, Sasha, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy, 2017
- Preble, Christopher A., The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, 2009
- Preston, Richard, The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus, 1995
- Putnam, Robert D., Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, 2015
- Rashid, Ahmed, Jihad: Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
- Raspail, Jean, The Camp of the Saints, 1973 (1975 translation)
- Roberts, Kenneth, Arundul, 1980
- Robinson, Ronald; Gallagher, John & Denny, Alice (Editors), Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, 2015
- Rosen, Nir, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. New York: Free Press, 2006.
- Rosen, Nir, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World (New York: The Nation Books, 2010).
- Ross, Michael L., The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations, Princeton University Press, 2012.
- Sanger, David E., The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, 2018
- Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
- Scharre, Paul, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, 2018
- Sciolino, Elaine, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, 2000, or 2005 paperback
- Sebastian, Mihail, For Two Thousand Years, 1934
- Sebestyen, Victor, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror, 2017
- Sell, Louis, From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR, 2016
- Shadid, Anthony. Night draws near : Iraq’s people in the shadow of America’s war. New York : Henry Holt, 2005
- Shadid, Anthony, Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
- Shafak, Elif, The Bastard of Istanbul
- Shami, Wafa, Olive Harvest in Palestine: A Story of Childhood Memories, 2019
- Sheehan, Neil, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Vintage, 2009
- Shlaim, Avi. The iron wall : Israel and the Arab world. New York : W.W. Norton, 2000.
- Singer, P.W. & Cole, August, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, 2015
- Sitaraman, Ganesh, The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America, 2019
- Skousen, W. Cleon, The 5000 Year Leap: Principles of Freedom 101, 2007
- Slahi, Mohamedou Ould, Guantánamo Diary, 2015
- Slaughter, Anne-Marie, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World, 2017
- Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
- Smith, Grant, The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, 2019
- Snyder, Timothy, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
- Soueif, Ahdaf, Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, 2012
- Steinhauer, Olen, The Cairo Affair: A Novel, 2014
- Stern, Jessica & Berger J.M., ISIS: The State of Terror, 2015
- Stevens, Roger, The Land of the Great Sophy, 1979
- Stewart, Rory, The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, 2006
- Stewart, Rory, The Places In Between, 2006
- Summers, Harry G., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio Press, 2009)
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 5th C. BC
- Sunstein, Cass R., Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter
- Suresha, Ron J., The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero, Lethe Press, 2011
- Thomas, Hugh, World Without End: Spain, Philip II, and the First Global Empire, 2015
- Thornton, A.P. Doctrines of Imperialism. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965
- Tolan, Sandy, The Lemon Tree: an Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, 2007
- Tooze, Adam, CRASHED: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, 2018
- Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History (12 volumes), 1934-1961
- Toynbee, Arnold Joseph, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilisations, 1922
- Trâm, Đặng Thùy, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Đặng Thùy Trâm, Broadway Books, 2007
- Updike, John, Terrorist, 2007
- Uris, Leon, Exodus, 1958
- Van Buren, Peter, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, 2012
- van Geldermalsen, Marguerite, Married to a Bedouin, 2010
- von Tunzelmann, Alex, Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower’s Campaign for Peace, 2016
- Vance, J.D., Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, 2016
- Wallace-Wells, David, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, 2019
- Wallach, Janet Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, 2005
- Warrick, Joby, The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA, 2012
- Webb, Jim, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, 2004
- Weiss, Michael & Hassan, Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, 2015
- Westover, Tara, Educated: A Memoir, 2018
- Wibberley, Leonard Patrick O'Connor, The Mouse That Roared, 1955
- Wills, Garry, What the Qur'an Meant: And Why It Matters, 2017
- Wilson, Edward O., The Social Conquest of Earth, 2012
- Woodard, Colin, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. New York: Viking Adult, 2011
- Woodfox, Albert, Solitary - Unbroken by four decades in Solitary confinement. My story of transformation and hope., 2019
- Wright, James, Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and its War, Thomas Dunne, 2017
- Wright, Robin, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, 2011
- Wyshochansky, Leo, Finding My Road to Freedom: From the Village of Komarnyky, Ukraine to the Town of Brunswick, Maine
- Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, 1991
- Yergin, Daniel, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, 1991
- Yousafzai, Malala, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, 2013
- Zygar, Mikhail, All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, 2016