The authors "show how the Hashemites played a decisive role in shaping present Middle Eastern boundaries and in hastening the collapse of Ottoman rule."--Jacket.

*Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time A nobleman's daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri's lush, dazzling, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy. The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Ambhan Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited. When Mehr's power comes to the attention of the Emperor's most feared mystics, she must use every ounce of will, subtlety, and power she possesses to resist their cruel agenda. And should she fail, the gods themselves may awaken seeking vengeance. . . "An ode to the quiet, fierce strength of women. . .pure wonder." —Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "Stunning and enthralling." —S. A. Chakraborty, USA Today bestselling author of The City of Brass "A darkly intricate, devastating, and utterly original story." —R. F. Kuang, award-winning author of the The Poppy War By Tasha Suri: The Books of Ambha duology Empire of Sand Realm of Ash The Burning Kingdoms trilogy The Jasmine Throne

From the mysteriously beautiful, richly hued landscape of the Saharan mountains to the sumptuous splendor of nineteenth-century Paris, Empires of Sand is a novel that takes us on an extraordinary, powerfully emotional journey In a clash between two civilizations, two men of common blood discover that in war, love, and even family, they are both destined to be outsiders.... The year is 1870. The proud Republic of France is crumbling under the onslaught of the Prussian army. Paris is under siege. Too young to understand the shifting fortunes of the empire, two boys forge a bond with their breathless adventures in the tunnels beneath the threatened city. Paul deVries is the cousin and constant companion of Michel deVries—called Moussa—whose world-explorer father shocked Paris with his marriage to a noblewoman of the Sahara. Moussa will inherit the title of count; Paul is destined to be a soldier like his father. But tragic events will send Moussa fleeing to his mother’s homeland, with its brooding mountains, its hidden caves and fortresses. And the two boys who have been the closest of friends are fated as men to become the bitterest of enemies—victims of history and the scheming of scoundrels. They meet again on the Sahara's blazing sands, one as part of a foolhardy French expeditionary force, the other with the nomadic Tuareg, a majestic race of veiled warriors who live and die by flashing swords and a harsh desert code of honor. On this unforgettable, ever-shifting landscape, Paul and Moussa are swept into another war, one far more brutal than anything they have experienced. Paul is obsessed with a quest for personal vengeance and honor. And Moussa, in love with a woman betrothed to an implacable Tuareg warrior, searches for the peace he knew as a child in France. Now they both face a challenge of sheer, harrowing survival: whether to follow the call of their shared blood...or the destiny written in the treacherous sands. Empires of Sand is a grand novel of adventure in the best tradition of historical fiction. With its astounding scenes of the desert and its rich cast of characters—soldiers, lovers, slaves, and zealots—this is a reading experience to be treasured and remembered long after the final page is turned.

From the earliest days of their empire in the New World, the Spanish sought to gain control of the native peoples and lands of what is now Sonora. While missionaries were successful in pacifying many Indians, the Seris--independent groups of hunter-gatherers who lived on the desert shores and islands of the Gulf of California--steadfastly defied Spanish efforts to subjugate them. Empire of Sand is a documentary history of Spanish attempts to convert, control, and ultimately annihilate the Seris. These papers of religious, military, and government officials attest to the Seris' resilience in the face of numerous Spanish attempts to conquer them and remove them from their lands. The documents include early observations of the Seris by Jesuit missionaries, descriptions of the collapse of the Seri mission system in 1748, accounts of the invasion of Tibur n Island in 1750 and the Sonora Expedition of 1767-71, and reports of late eighteenth-century Seri hostilities. Thomas E. Sheridan's introduction puts the documents in perspective, while his notes objectively clarify their significance. By skillfully weaving the documents into a coherent narrative of Spanish-Seri interaction, he has produced a compelling account of empire and resistance that speaks to anthropologists, historians, and all readers who take heart in stories of resistance to oppression.

At the end of the First World War Britain and to a much lesser extent France created the modern Middle East. The possessions of the former Ottoman Empire were carved up with scant regard for the wishes of those who lived there. Frontiers were devised and alien dynasties imposed on the populations as arbitrarily as in medieval times. From the outset the project was destined to failure. Conflicting and ambiguous promises had been made to the Arabs during the war but were not honoured. Brief hopes for Arab unity were dashed, and a harsh belief in western perfidy persists to the present day. Britain was quick to see the riches promised by the black pools of oil that lay on the ground around Baghdad. When France too grasped their importance, bitter differences opened up and the area became the focus of a return to traditional enmity. The war-time allies came close to blows and then drifted apart, leaving a vacuum of which Hitler took advantage. Working from both primary and secondary sources, Walter Reid explores Britain's role in the creation of the modern Middle East and the rise of Zionism from the early years of the twentieth century to 1948, when Britain handed over Palestine to UN control. From the decisions that Britain made has flowed much of the instability of the region and of the world-wide tensions that threaten the twenty-first century. How far was Britain to blame?

From Morocco to Iran and the Black Sea to the Red, Water on Sand rewrites the history of the Middle East and North Africa from the Little Ice Age to the Cold War era. As the first holistic environmental history of the region, it shows the intimate connections between peoples and environments and how these relationships shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book evidence the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of scholarly inquiry.

Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties. Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack's powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in war making as a result of the information revolution. He suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.

The legendary Spartacus is recast as a fierce female warrior in this action-packed tale of a 17-year-old princess and a handsome gladiator who dared take on the Roman Republic.

"Pillar of Sand points the way toward protecting rivers and vital ecosystems even as we aim to produce enough food for a projected 8 billion people by the year 2030. Postel shows how innovative irrigation technologies and strategies can alleviate hunger and environmental stress at the same time. And she calls for a new ethic of sufficiency and sharing in response to impending water limits."--BOOK JACKET.

Prophecy declared that corrupt politician Corajidin would rule the Shrianese Federation, even become its new Emperor--and sinister magic has helped him defy death in order to do it. But his victory is not assured, thanks to clashing rival factions that hinder any attempts to unify the nation.