In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity... remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.In a voice in turn eloquent, angry, reflective and darkly comic, Riverbend recounts stories of life in an occupied city—of neighbors whose homes are raided by US troops, whose relatives disappear into prisons and whose children are kidnapped by money-hungry militias. At times, the tragic blends into the absurd, as she tells of her family jumping out of bed to wash clothes and send e-mails in the middle of the night when the electricity is briefly restored, or of their quest to bury an elderly aunt when the mosques are all overbooked for wakes and the cemeteries are all full. The only Iraqi blogger writing from a woman’s perspective, she also describes a once-secular city where women are now afraid to leave their homes without head covering and a male escort.Interspersed with these vivid snapshots from daily life are Riverbend’s analyses of everything from the elusive workings of the Iraqi Governing Council to the torture in Abu Ghraib, from the coverage provided by American media and by Al-Jazeera to Bush’s State of the Union speech. Here again, she focuses especially on the fate of women, whose rights and freedoms have fallen victim to rising fundamentalisms in a chaotic postwar society.With thousands of loyal readers worldwide, the Riverbend blog is widely recognized around the world as a crucial source of information not available through the mainstream media. The book version of this blog will have “value-added” features: an introduction and timeline of events by veteran journalist James Ridgeway, excerpts from Riverbend’s links and an epilogue by Riverbend herself.

“Riverbend,” the Iraqi woman whose “articulate, even poetic prose packs an emotional punch” (The New York Times), continues her dispatches from... her native Baghdad.Interweaving commentary on major events since October 2004, with compelling stories about her own life as well as her family’s daily struggles, this is journalism from ground zero recording both occupation and insurgency.

In this often moving, sometimes wry account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq and in exile in the years following, Iraqi-born,... British-educated artist Nuha al-Radi shows us the effects of war on ordinary people. She recounts the day-to-day realities of living in a city under siege, where food has to be consumed or thrown out because there is no way to preserve it, where eventually people cannot sleep until the nightly bombing commences, where packs of stray dogs roam the streets (and provide her own dog Salvi with a harem) and rats invade homes. Through it all, al-Radi works at her art and gathers with neighbors and family for meals and other occasions, happy and sad. In the wake of the war, al-Radi lives in semi-exile, shuttling between Beirut and Amman, travelling to New York, London, Mexico and Yemen. As she suffers the indignities of being an Iraqi in exile, al-Radi immerses us in a way of life constricted by the stress and effects of war and embargoes, giving texture to a reality we have only been able to imagine before now. But what emanates most vibrantly from these diaries is the spirit of endurance and the celebration of the smallest of life’s joys.

Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy and worlds... apart from the country it has since become. During her many years in Iraq, Stark was witness to the rise and fall of the British involvement in the country as well as the early years of independence. Typically—and controversially—she chose to live outside the close-knit western expatriate scene and immersed herself in the way of life of ordinary Iraqis—living in the “native” quarter of the city and spending time with its tribal sheikhs and leaders. Venturing out of Baghdad, she traveled to Mosul, Nineveh, Tikrit and Najaf, where she perceptively describes the millennia-old tensions between Sunni and Shi'a. In the 1940s she returned again, this time traveling south, to the Marsh Arabs, whose way of life has now all but disappeared; north into Kurdistan and later, Kuwait, in the days before the oil boom.

Against a backdrop of London and war-torn Baghdad, three friends grapple with their sexual, cultural, and political identities. This is a surprising... first play from Iraqi writer Hassan Abdulrazzak.

A wise and often gently funny memoir by one of the world's authorities on Arabic literature, this book offers an intimate view of Jewish life in Baghdad... in the 1930s and 40s. It describes vividly the young writer's intellectual and emotional growth and maps the now-vanished world of Baghdad's book stalls and literary cafes, its Arabic-speaking Jewish bank clerks, tuxedoed Iraqi-Jewish weddings, outdoor movies at the Cinema Diana, and bonfires by the Tigris. As the pieces of Somekh's unsentimental and sharply drawn memoir accumulate, they also mount in meaning.

Bagheria è un racconto lucido e sincero affidato alla memoria. L’autrice, bambina, arriva in Sicilia dopo aver trascorso due anni in un campo di... concentramento giapponese. Con infantile intensità vive la scoperta delle proprie origini, della nobile famiglia materna, così radicata in quel paesaggio fatto di palazzi baronali e case che sembrano reggersi una all’altra. Nell’omertà delle pareti domestiche si consumano rapporti tortuosi, dove il prezzo da pagare ricade sempre sulle donne, sacri. cate alla “legge” dell’onore in una società che tutto sa, ma. finge di non vedere. Una narrazione condotta con geloso pudore dei sentimenti e un’attenzione ostinata per i ritmi musicali della parola.

Ten years ago, Stephen King published Bag of Bones , a number one bestse ller, a tale of grie f, of love's enduring bonds, and the haunting secrets of... the past . Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs. Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway and finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a vindictive millionaire, Max Devore, who is trying to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie's struggle -- and begins to fall in love with her -- he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What do the forces that have been unleashed here want of Mike Noonan?

The rapid growth of entrepreneurship and small firms has been one of the greatest successes in post-Communist transformation in Poland. SMEs have... greatly contributed to employment, investment and value added in the Polish economy. However, key barriers to further growth remain in the business environment for SMEs and entrepreneurs. This book sets out the current SME and entrepreneurship climate, reviews SME and entrepreneurship issues and policies at national and local levels, and provides observations and recommendations for improving and supporting entrepreneurship and SMEs in Poland.

Worldwide in its membership and increasingly being recognized as the youngest of the world religions, the Baha'i Faith is enjoying rapid expansion. In... this captivating book, one of the world's leading Baha'i scholars gives a brief survey of the life, the works, the claims and the teachings of Baha'u'llah, its founder.