From Baghdad to Chicago is a diligent and comprehensive memoir of an Iraqi-born physician, growing up in Iraq, and pursuing his education and professional calling in Medicine, to serve to the utmost of his ability. Asad Bakir speaks to the culture of Iraqi and Middle Eastern history, and offers timely reflections on the contemporary practice of Medicine. Having lived through four generations of Iraqis, he has experienced Iraqs dramatic upheavals over the last sixty-five years and seen the ruin left behind. This book is a memoir of Dr. Bakirs life and times in Iraq, England and the US, and a fascinating account of his 26-year work at Cook County Hospital of Chicago. He covers in depth a wide array of subjects of great interest: history, politics, literature, sociology, the arts, and the science and practice of Medicine. His account helps us understand the recent events of the much-troubled Middle East. He describes events as objectively as possible, in a scientific discipline consistent with his medical studies and career, and he speaks with a voice of solid authority. Join the author as he offers a firsthand account of the Arab Renaissance before it expired in the 1960s, the violent toppling of the Iraqi Hashemite monarchy, the dark chapters of Saddam Husseins tyranny, the wars he invited upon Iraq and the lethal 12-year sanctions. Very engaging, as well, are his reflections on the US invasion of Iraq, global terrorism and the current state of healthcare in the US.

Who is Abu-Moch? Is he Kadouri Kudsi Zada, a hard-working Jewish businessman from Baghdad? Or is he a Muslim dervish named Nur El Din Khan? Find out when you read this spellbinding true-to-life tale of a shoemaker from Baghdad who, when forced to flee for his life, finds refuge in Iran as a Shi'ite Muslim. Readers of this gripping novel about the inimitable Abu-Moch will gain insight into the Muslim culture that features so prominently in the news. Watch as events move between Iraq and Iran and you will discover the complexity of life for Jews in Muslim countries. When relationships between Jews and Muslims deteriorate in Iraq, the hero and his family are forced to relocate to the newly created State of Israel. The difficulties they face are revealed in their desperate attempt to be absorbed into the Jewish State. As fast-paced as any thriller, this biographical novel offers a penetrating study of immigration. It should be required reading for anyone interested in Middle-Eastern culture!

“Escaping Iraq” is a true story exactly as Evelyn Shizodin Lewis lived it. As an Assyrian girl born in Iraq her story will keep readers gripped in her story of living through three wars, all under Ṣaddām Hussein’s rein. Her story takes the reader through her youth giving details of Christians living in a Moslem world. History buffs will be rewarded as she tells stories related by her dad and mother who were both born in North Iraq, land of the Kurds. The burning desire for personal and religious freedoms required her family of eleven to use many plans of escape. The reader will learn how her family was split up and were spread over nine countries, shuffling from country to country as refugees. There are so many stories within her story. Escaping through Kurdish country with her husband who was AWOL and would have been shot on sight if caught by the Iraqi military, traversing a mine field and its near disaster, crossing the Aegean Sea in a small extremely overloaded boat in the middle of the night, and being jailed twice, will keep the reader mesmerized until her stories happy ending

As the C-130 transport aircraft circled Baghdad in preparation for landing, Jack Armstrong, the forty-three year old seasoned intelligence operative, fastened his seatbelt for a mission he never bargained for. Armstrong soon discovers that his many years of working undercover in the Middle East haven't prepared him for the transformative journey he begins to make once he steps foot on the ground in Baghdad. Throughout the mission, Armstrong finds himself engaged in an upside-down interior labyrinth: struggles with his deeply held moral and religious convictions; conflicts within his work for the C.I.A. in Iraq; his love for Iraqi medical doctor Haifa al-Hashimi; commitments he cannot keep to his wife and children in the States; and the ideals and policies that he has always defended working for the U.S. government that don't seem to 'fit' any longer. Armstrong is partnered up with middle-aged Iraqi informant, Daoud al-Hassan, a pensive former victim of torture from the old regime, full of old-world wisdom and common sense survival tactics who gets Armstrong out of many a tight circumstance. Colin MacPhearson, an old friend from British Intelligence, joins Armstrong and Daoud in their pursuit of 'Jabbar' - the symbol of all this is evil and the ultimate target of the mission. The characters, conflicts, carnage and circumstances that Jack Armstrong becomes enmeshed in make for not only an action-packed drama but a study in the common denominators that make us all human. It offers a front-row center seat to the real-life story of today's Iraq through the eyes of Jack Armstrong and the circle of humanity around him. It presents a human face to the Iraqi people and 'their story'. But the real 'man from Baghdad' is not revealed until the very end of the story - or is it the beginning?

An Introduction to Islam, Fourth Edition, provides students with a thorough, unified and topical introduction to the global religious community of Islam. In addition, the author's extensive field work, experience, and scholarship combined with his engaging writing style and passion for the subject also sets his text apart. An Introduction to Islam places Islam within a cultural, political, social, and religious context, and examines its connections with Judeo-Christian morals. Its integration of the doctrinal and devotional elements of Islam enables readers to see how Muslims think and live, engendering understanding and breaking down stereotypes. This text also reviews pre-Islamic history, so readers can see how Islam developed historically.

A historical exploration of events and daily life in Baghdad in both ancient and modern times.

From October 2006 to December 2007, Daniel A. Sjursen-then a U.S. Army lieutenant-led a light scout platoon across Baghdad. The experiences of Ghost Rider platoon provide a soldier's-eye view of the incredible complexities of warfare, peacekeeping, and counterinsurgency in one of the world's most ancient cities. Sjursen reflects broadly and critically on the prevailing narrative of the surge as savior of America's longest war, on the overall military strategy in Iraq, and on U.S. relations with ordinary Iraqis. At a time when just a handful of U.S. senators and representatives have a family member in combat, Sjursen also writes movingly on questions of America's patterns of national service. Who now serves and why? What connection does America's professional army have to the broader society and culture? What is the price we pay for abandoning the model of the citizen soldier? With the bloody emergence of ISIS in 2014, Iraq and its beleaguered, battle-scarred people are again much in the news. Unlike other books on the U.S. war in Iraq, Ghost Riders of Baghdad is part battlefield chronicle, part critique of American military strategy and policy, and part appreciation of Iraq and its people. At once a military memoir, history, and cultural commentary, Ghost Riders of Bahdad delivers a compelling story and a deep appreciation of both those who serve and the civilians they strive to protect. Sjursen provides a riveting addition to our understanding of modern warfare and its human costs.

The purpose of this book is to draw attention to the sites of life, politics and culture where current and past generations of the Islamic world have made their mark. Unlike many previous volumes dealing with the city in the Islamic world, this one has been expanded not only to include snapshots of historical fabric, but also to deal with the transformation of this fabric into modern and contemporary urban entities. Salma Khadra Jayyusi was awarded Cultural Personality of the Year by the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for her profound contribution to Arabic literature and culture in 2020. The paperback edition of The City in the Islamic World was published to celebrate the occasion.

The recent reopening of Iraq’s National Museum attracted worldwide attention, underscoring the country’s dual image as both the cradle of civilization and a contemporary geopolitical battleground. A sweeping account of the rich history that has played out between these chronological poles, From Mesopotamia to Iraq looks back through 10,000 years of the region’s deeply significant yet increasingly overshadowed past. Hans J. Nissen and Peter Heine begin by explaining how ancient Mesopotamian inventions—including urban society, a system of writing, and mathematical texts that anticipated Pythagoras—profoundly influenced the course of human history. These towering innovations, they go on to reveal, have sometimes obscured the major role Mesopotamia continued to play on the world stage. Alexander the Great, for example, was fascinated by Babylon and eventually died there. Seventh-century Muslim armies made the region one of their first conquests outside the Arabian peninsula. And the Arab caliphs who ruled for centuries after the invasion built the magnificent city of Baghdad, attracting legions of artists and scientists. Tracing the evolution of this vibrant country into a contested part of the Ottoman Empire, a twentieth-century British colony, a republic ruled by Saddam Hussein, and the democracy it has become, Nissen and Heine repair the fragmented image of Iraq that has come to dominate our collective imagination. In hardly any other continuously inhabited part of the globe can we chart such developments in politics, economy, and culture across so extended a period of time. By doing just that, the authors illuminate nothing less than the forces that have made the world what it is today.