Baghdad Express

Author : Joel Turnipseed
Publisher : Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN 13 : 9780873514507
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Baghdad Express written by Joel Turnipseed and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early summer of 1990, Joel Turnipseed was homeless--kicked out of his college's philosophy program, dumped by his girlfriend. He had been AWOL from his Marine Corps Reserve unit for more than three months, spending his days hanging out in coffee shops reading Plato and Thoreau. Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Turnipseed's unit was activated for service in Operation Desert Shield. By January of '91, he was in Saudi Arabia driving tractor-trailers for the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion--the legendary "Baghdad Express." The greatest logistical operation in Marine Corps history, the Baghdad Express hauled truckloads of explosives and ammunition across hundreds of miles of desert. But on the brink of war, Turnipseed's greatest struggles are still within. Armed with an M-16 and a seabag full of philosophy books, he is a wise-ass misfit, an ironic observer with a keen eye for vivid detail, a rebellious Marine alive to the moral ambiguity of his life and his situation. Developed from Turnipseed's 1997 feature article for GQ Magazine, this innovative memoir--simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, equal parts Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye--explores both the absurdities of war and the necessity of accepting our flawed world of shadows. With expansive humanity and profane grace, Turnipseed finds the real-world answers to his philosophical questions and reaches the hardest peace for any young man to achieve--with himself.

Author : Sean McMeekin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674058534
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Berlin-Baghdad Express written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends. The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey’s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I—Turkey’s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution—are illuminated as never before. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia’s yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.

Author : Andrew Eames
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1590209168
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The 8:55 to Baghdad written by Andrew Eames and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A winning blend of travelogue and literary biography” by a British journalist who travels the journey Agatha Christie once did from London to Iraq. (Entertainment Weekly) With her marriage to her first husband over, Agatha Christie decided to take a much needed holiday; the Caribbean had been her intended destination, but a conversation at a dinner party with a couple who had just returned from Iraq changed her mind. Five days later she was off on a completely different trajectory. Merging literary biography with travel adventure, and ancient history with contemporary world events, Andrew Eames tells a riveting tale and reveals fascinating and little-known details of this exotic chapter in the life of Agatha Christie. His own trip from London to Baghdad--a journey much more difficult to make in 2002 with the political unrest in the Middle East and the war in Iraq, than it was in 1928--becomes intertwined with Agatha's, and the people he meets could have stepped out of a mystery novel. Fans of Agatha Christie will delight in Eames' description of the places and events that appeared in and influenced her fiction--and armchair travelers will thrill in the exotica of the journey itself. “Agatha Christie fans, as well as connoisseurs of fine travel writing, will relish British journalist Eames's gripping, humorous and eye-opening account of his train and bus trip across Europe and the Middle East on the eve of the second Gulf War.” Publisher’s Weekly Second;Iraq;Gulf;war;Kurds;Armenians;Palestinians;English;travel;writer;writing;1928;bestselling;mystery;author;English;crime;writer;Europe;passenger;train;memoir;literary;biography;adventure;travel;history;autobiography;holiday;Middle;East;Damascus;Ur;Syria;archaeology TRV026090 TRAVEL / Special Interest / Literary BIO007000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures BIO026000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs TRV015000 TRAVEL / Middle East / General 9781468306415 Candlemoth Ellory, R.J.

Author : R. W. Greenacre
Publisher : Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1848762658
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Baghdad Express written by R. W. Greenacre and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 2003 and two private security companies, Redline in the UK and Eagle in the US are preparing to go to Iraq. Redline’s leader Westerby is dreaming of a world where the sun never sets on the Empire and has bought himself a pith helmet and a monocle. Eagle’s boss, Flint, wants to make up for not going to Vietnam, while his second in command TJ is dreaming of a new boat. Westerby’s reluctant recruit, Carlingford, wants to escape his dead end job and sense of failure and find some meaning in his life.Once in Iraq our characters meet in a compound in a Baghdad suburb to build a theme park. Carlingford finds love amongst the dust and the madness but his loyalties are divided when Larry McKinley, the bombastic, six shooter toting U.S television reporter he is protecting is kidnapped. McKinley came to straighten out the ‘liberal media’s lies’ about Iraq but instead finds himself chained up in the cellar of librarian-turned-unlikely-insurgent Samir.As Iraq descends into chaos, an unsafe second-hand roller coaster, to be renamed the Baghdad Express, is rising from the ashes, but not everyone is fooled by this low culture masquerading as freedom and progress. When Carlingford finally rides the Baghdad Express he can see from its summit the truth about the war; the violence, incompetence, greed and deceit. The only thing keeping him in Iraq now is his love for CPA spin doctor Suria, but even his love is dying before the truth of what they have done to a country.The Baghdad Express is in turns bawdy, satirical, farcical and downright funny but ultimately, like the war itself, a story of tragedy and waste. Come ride The Baghdad Express – what will you see?

Author : Nuha al-Radi
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307424901
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Baghdad Diaries written by Nuha al-Radi and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Sean McMeekin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674256298
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Berlin-Baghdad Express written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends. The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey’s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I—Turkey’s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution—are illuminated as never before. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia’s yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.

Author : John Dos Passos
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Orient Express written by John Dos Passos and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journal of the author on a trip through Russia and the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean, including Syria and Lebanon), published in 1927.

Author : Edwin Black
Publisher : Dialog Press
ISBN 13 : 0914153579
Total Pages : 646 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Banking on Baghdad written by Edwin Black and published by Dialog Press. This book was released on 2021-04-10 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Banking on Baghdad, New York Times and international bestselling author Edwin Black chronicles the dramatic and tragic history of a land long the center of world commerce and conflict. Tracing the involvement of Western governments and militaries, as well as oil, banking, and other corporate interests, Black pinpoints why today, just as throughout modern history, the world needs Iraq's resources and remains determined to acquire and protect them. Banking on Baghdad almost painfully documents the many ways Iraq's recent history mirrors its tumultuous past.

Author : Peter Millar
Publisher : Arcadia Books
ISBN 13 : 190980777X
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Marrakech Express written by Peter Millar and published by Arcadia Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in 1969 when Morocco's ancient capital was a hashish clouded happy mecca, Crosby, Stills and Nash recorded their cheesy (and hopelessly inaccurate) foot-tapping anthem 'Marrakech Express'. A generation on, award-winning journalist, author, and one-time glamrock fan Peter Millar uses what is now the country's best visited tourist destination as the embarkation point for a literally reverse-engineered train journey through this still exotic, diverse and challenging North African country, struggling to maintain its unique blend of tradition and tolerance in the turbulent winds of the Arab Spring.

Author : Justin Marozzi
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141948043
Total Pages : 628 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Baghdad written by Justin Marozzi and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood, celebrated young travelwriter-historian Justin Marozzi gives us a many-layered history of one of the world's truly great cities - both its spectacular golden ages and its terrible disasters 'Justin Marozzi is the most brilliant of the new generation of travelwriter-historians' - Sunday Telegraph Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers and its tyrants, of its philosophers and conquerors. Here, in the first new history of Baghdad in nearly 80 years, Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole tumultuous history of what was once the greatest capital on earth. Justin Marozzi is a Councillor of the Royal Geographic Society and a Senior Research Fellow at Buckingham University. He has broadcast for BBC Radio Four, and regularly contributes to a wide range of publications, including the Financial Times, for which he has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. His previous books include the bestselling Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year (2004), and The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus.