Some Interesting Books

This is a list of books read by a group in the greater Stony Brook area. Our focus has been on the Middle East and on history but we have often strayed from that. Books to read have been chosen by a loose consensus and not everybody agreed on all the books we have read.

I have marked with one to three stars those that I particularly liked.

The citations are a bit sloppy but I think there is enough information to find the books on Amazon or in a library.

2004

1. * Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey Fouad Ajami
2. Season of Migration to the North Tayeb Salih
3. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror Bernard Lewis
4. ** Trench Abdel Raman Munif
5. Arafat's War Karsh
6. Ghassin Kanafani: Men in the Sun and Returning to Haifa
   Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories
7. Dershowitz Case for Israel
8. The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times Reeva S.
   Simon (Editor), Michael M. Laskier (Editor), Sara Reguer (Editor)
9. From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over
   Palestine Joan Peters
10. ** Occidentalism Ian Buruma and A. Margalit,
11. Jews of Khazaria Kevin Alan Brook
12. Thieves in the Night Arthur Koestler
13. ** Satan In Goray I B Singer Introduction by Ruth Wisse.
14. The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai
15. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties
    (Hellenistic Culture and Society) by Shaye J. D. Cohen
16. Terror and Liberalism by PaulBerman
17. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Books 12-20 covering mainly the Hashmoneans (about 300pp)

    2005

18. Josephus, Against Apion; also Autobiography
19. R. Kagan Of Paradise and Power (103 pages)
20. *** Fareed Zakaria The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
21. * Lawrence H. Schiffman Who was a Jew? - Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism
22. *** Snow by Orhan Pamuk
23. ** Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the three chapters (50-52)dealing with the rise of Islam
24. * What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank
25. Steinsaltz We Jews
26. Dore Gold's Tower of Babble
27. Bible and Sword : England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour by Barbara W. Tuchman
28. ** Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith
29. Mideast Peace Process by Kozody

    2006

30. *** Faith at War by Trofimov
31. * Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
32. * Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
33. Mao : The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
34. * A Writer at War, from the notes of Vassily Grosman
35. *** My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
36. ** No god, but God by Reza Aslan (my Amazon review)

    2007

37. Jew vs Jew by Samuel G. Freedman
38. Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein
39. * The Wicked Son by David Mamet
40. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (review)
41. Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren (my Amazon review)
42. ** Lenin, Hitler, Stalin by R. Gellately (review)
43. Jews and Power by Ruth Wisse (my Amazon review)

2008

44. World on Fire by Amy Chua
45. * Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World by Stephen O'Shea
46. The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple