"By Far Euphrates: A Tale" by Deborah Alcock is inspired by many tales that came from the regions surrounding the Euphrates river. A tale of faith, heroism, and adventure that many readers could only dream of, this book has captured its audience for over a century. Meant as a commentary of what Christianity can do to "improve" non-Christian countries, this book would largely be considered a source of propaganda. However, Alcock's trust in her faith is palpable and does make the story worthy of a read with a critical eye.

A Jewish boy's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust. Alexander, 16, of Windsor, Ontario, is tormented by stories of death camps recounted by his family and desperately tries to find meaning.

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run through the heart of the Middle East and merge in the area of Mesopotamia known as the "cradle of civilization." In their long and volatile political history, the sixteenth century ushered in a rare era of stability and integration. A series of military campaigns between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf brought the entirety of their flow under the institutional control of the Ottoman Empire, then at the peak of its power and wealth. Rivers of the Sultan tells the history of the Tigris and Euphrates during the early modern period. Under the leadership of Sultan Süleyman I, the rivers became Ottoman from mountain to ocean, managed by a political elite that pledged allegiance to a single household, professed a common religion, spoke a lingua franca, and received orders from a central administration based in Istanbul. Faisal Husain details how Ottoman unification institutionalized cooperation among the rivers' dominant users and improved the exploitation of their waters for navigation and food production. Istanbul harnessed the energy and resources of the rivers for its security and economic needs through a complex network of forts, canals, bridges, and shipyards. Above all, the imperial approach to river management rebalanced the natural resource disparity within the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Istanbul regularly organized shipments of grain, metal, and timber from upstream areas of surplus in Anatolia to downstream areas of need in Iraq. Through this policy of natural resource redistribution, the Ottoman Empire strengthened its presence in the eastern borderland region with the Safavid Empire and fended off challenges to its authority. Placing these world historic bodies of water at its center, Rivers of the Sultan reveals intimate bonds between state and society, metropole and periphery, and nature and culture in the early modern world.

A distinguished historical work presenting eight centuries of Roman history in Asia Minor and the Middle East. -- Front cover.

A collection of short stories explores such themes as the impact of the past on the present and of one person on another.

A few years after the Second World War, a stranger enters the lives of Joseph Ivri and his family in Windsor, Canada. A dazzling beauty telling tales of wondrous places and wartime dangers, Eva carries with her, at great risk, the renowned Augsburg Miscellany - a magnificent 15th century illuminated manuscript. And, as Joseph recounts the story of Eva and his growing love for her, he finally reveals the novel's secrets: the darkness to which we are all subject.

In 1920 an Arab revolt came perilously close to inflicting a shattering defeat upon the British Empire's forces occupying Iraq after the Great War. A huge peasant army besieged British garrisons and bombarded them with captured artillery. British columns and armoured trains were ambushed and destroyed, and gunboats were captured or sunk. Britain's quest for oil was one of the principal reasons for its continuing occupation of Iraq. However, with around 131,000 Arabs in arms at the height of the conflict, the British were very nearly driven out. Only a massive infusion of Indian troops prevented a humiliating rout. Enemy on the Euphrates is the definitive account of the most serious armed uprising against British rule in the twentieth century. Bringing central players such as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell vividly to life, Ian Rutledge's masterful account is a powerful reminder of how Britain's imperial objectives sowed the seeds of Iraq's tragic history.

Tel Abu Hureyra, a settlement by the Euphrates River in Syria, was excavated in 1972-73 by an international team of archaeologists that included the authors of the book and scientists from English, American, and Australian universities. The excavation uncovered two successive villages: in the first village (c. 11,500-10,000 BP), inhabitants foraged vegetation and hunted local wildlife, the Persian gazelle, in particular. In the second village (c. 9700-7000 BP), inhabitants employed a more sophisticated method of food production, the cultivation of grain crops and the pasturing of sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. Documented first hand in this book, these findings capture the transition in human history from the hunting-and-gathering to the farming way of life.

In this groundbreaking work that sets apart fact and legend, authors Finkelstein and Silberman use significant archeological discoveries to provide historical information about biblical Israel and its neighbors. In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.