Their mission: To take out the scuds. Eight went out. Five came back. Their story had been closed in secrecy. Until now. They were British Special Forces, trained to be the best. In January 1991 a squad of eight men went behind the Iraqi lines on a top secret mission. It was called Bravo Two Zero. On command was Sergeant Andy McNab. "They are the true unsung heroes of the war." -- Lt. Col. Steven Turner, American F-15E commander. Dropped into "scud alley" carrying 210-pound packs, McNab and his men found themselves surrounded by Saddam''s army. Their radios didn''t work. The weather turned cold enough to freeze diesel fuel. And they had been spotted. Their only chance at survival was to fight their way to the Syrian border seventy-five miles to the northwest and swim the Euphrates river to freedom. Eight set out. Five came back. "I''ll tell you who destroyed the scuds -- it was the British SAS. They were fabulous." -- John Major, British Prime Minister. This is their story. Filled with no-holds-barred detail about McNab''s capture and excruciating torture, it tells of men tested beyond the limits of human endurance... and of the war you didn''t see on CNN. Dirty, deadly, and fought outside the rules.

The author has combed the works of contemporary Arab chronicles of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants. He retells their story and offers insights into the historical forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.

Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, drew on his ten years in the Middle East to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook... an engrossing journey not to be missed." Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you''re only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it." -- Seymour Hersh. "From Beirut To Jerusalem is the most intelligent and comprehensive account one is likely to read." -- New York Times Book Review.

When Norwegian Vikings first raided the European coast in the 8th century AD, their leaders were from the middle ranks of warriors known as hersirs. At this time the hersir was typically an independent landowner or local chieftain with equipment superior to that of his followers. By the end of the 10th century, the independence of the hersir was gone, and he was now a regional servant of the Norwegian king. This book investigates these brutal, mobile warriors, and examines their tactics and psychology in war, dispelling the idea of the Viking raider as simply a killing machine.

At a time when the Middle East has come closer to achieving peace than ever before, eminent Israeli historian Benny Morris explodes the myths cherished by both sides to present an epic history of Zionist-Arab relations over the past 120 years.

Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population. Following the Holocaust, the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, but it also shattered Palestinian Arab society and gave rise to a massive refugee problem. Morris offers distinctive accounts of each of the subsequent Israeli-Arab wars and details the sporadic peace efforts in between, culminating in the peace process initiated by the Rabin Government. In a new afterword to the Vintage edition, he examines Ehud Barak's leadership, the death of President Assad of Syria, and Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, and the recent renewed conflict with the Palestinians. Studded with illuminating portraits of the major protagonists, Righteous Victims provides an authoritative record of the middle east and its continuing struggle toward peace.

As it Celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, the State of Israel could count many important successes, but its conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world at large casts a long shadow over its history. What was promulgated as an "iron-wall" strategy -- dealing with the Arabs from a position of unassailable strength -- was meant to yield to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. The goal remains elusive.

In this penetrating studv. Avi Shlaim examines how variations of the iron-wall philosophy have guided Israel''s leaders; he finds that, white the strategy has been successful, opportunities have been lost to progress from military security to broader peace. The Iron Wall brilliantly illuminates past progress and future prospects for peace in the Middle East.

The great Arab singer Asmahan was the toast of Cairo song and cinema in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as World War II approached. She remained a figure of glamour and intrigue throughout her life and lives on today in legend as one of the shaping forces in the development of Egyptian popular culture. In this biography, author Sherifa Zuhur does a thorough study of the music and film of Asmahan and her historical setting.

A Druze princess actually named Amal al-Atrash, Asmahan came from an important clan in the mountains of Syria but broke free from her traditional family background, left her husband, and became a public performer, a role frowned upon for women of the time.

This unique biography of the controversial Asmahan focuses on her public as well as her private life. She was a much sought-after guest in the homes of Egypt''s rich and famous, but she was also rumored to be an agent for the Allied forces during World War II.

Through the story of Asmahan, the reader glimpses not only aspects of the cultural and political history of Egypt and Syria between the two world wars, but also the change in attitude in the Arab world toward women as public performers on stage. Life in wartime Cairo comes alive in this illustrated account of one of the great singers of the Arab world, a woman who played an important role in history.

This book is an original and perceptive study of Britain''s withdrawal from her last Arab Dependencies, based on a combination of first hand experience and extensive research. Glen Balfour-Paul opens by outlining Britain''s position in the Middle East at the end of the Second World War. He then presents in three separate chapters a detailed account of the forces that culminated in withdrawal from each of the countries. In the final chapters, the author compares and contrasts the three episodes in terms of Britain''s evolving attitude to empire, public pressures from within and outside the territories, the tensions that arose between policy makers in London and those executing their decisions, attitudes of British officials to their task and the political and economic aftermath of independence.

Three years after the departure of the Ayatollah Rouhallah Khomeini, Iran''s political future remains uncertain. This volume explores the directions the Islamic regime and, more importantly, the Iranian society and nation are likely to take in the 1990s. The study begins with a brief historical survey of Iran''s political institutions, its sociocultural traits, and its economic and military conditions, as well as its foreign policy orientation at the time of the revolution. It follows with a summary of the political, social, and economic changes the Islamic revolution introduced. These serve as benchmarks against which to measure the changes and reforms of the last three years and provide a basis for sketching the potential future directions of Iran''s domestic evolution and foreign relations.

Now in its seventh year, the Iraq-Iran War has recently become the focus of intense world-wide attention, especially in the United States, where the attack on the USS Stark, the reflagging of the Kuwaiti tankers, and the heavy presence of American warships in the Gulf have sparked a heated debate in Congress and among the American people. How did this conflict begin? And how can it be resolved? In this informative volume, Majid Khadduri, a world-renowned authority on Islamic law and the author of numerous books on Middle Eastern problems, provides a thoughtful account of the Gulf War, covering the complete history of relations between these two nations, the present conflict, and the possibility of peace in the future. As Khadduri points out, the roots of the war run deep, growing out of ethnic differences (the Iranians are Persians, the Iraqi Arabs), boundary disputes, and over ten centuries of religious antagonism. Khadduri explains how the rise of Persia as a Shi''ite state helped divide Islam into two factions (Shi''ite and Sunni Muslims) and how the Sunni-Shi''i controversy inflamed tensions between the two countries. He describes the stormy relations between Iraq and Iran after World War I, the rise of the Pan-Arab Ba''th Party in Iraq in the late 1960s, and the Treaty of 1975, signed by the Shah and then deputy President Saddam Hussein (Husayn), which brought a half-decade of peace before it fell apart. He also discusses how the nature of government in these two nations--one a clerical state headed by Khomeini (Khumayni), the other a secular state ruled by the Ba''th Party and President Hussein (Husayn)--complicates peace negotiations (the Iraqi see the war as a political dispute over national boundaries, the Iranians as a religious war, with no political boundaries at all). The United Nations might be able to pressure Iraq and Iran to end the war, Khadduri concludes, but until their embedded antagonisms are resolved, there will never be lasting peace between these two nations. For anyone concerned about the turmoil in the Middle East, this perceptive volume offers a goldmine of information, much of it enlightening, much of it disturbing.

This is a new edition of a political study of Indian administrators in the twentieth century. The focus is primarily on the Indian Civil Service and its successor, the Indian Administrative Service. The book examines how the British ruled India and why the colonial administrative structures they initiated are still prevalent in India today. Studying the Indian Civil Service and its successor, the Indian Administrative Service, and drawing on reminiscences of the men and women who served in them as well as previously unpublished documents, Potter explains how state forms are reproduced through time despite political changes in their environment.