Arabian Nights And Daze

A United States Foreign Service couple renews an official presence in Yemen. Set only eight years after the Republican Revolution had ousted a thousand-year-old dynasty of Shiite (Zaydi) Muslim imams, the memoir describes with both humor and respect the country's struggles in the early throes of becoming a modern, viable state.

After the 2001 ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the United States and its allies found themselves in a country devastated by a series of wars. This book looks at how, working with their Afghan counterparts, they engaged in a complex effort to rebuild security, development, and governance, all while fighting a low-intensity war.

These insightful essays, editorials, personal commentaries, and reports on foreign affairs first appeared in the online journal American Diplomacy (www.americandiplomacy.org) between 1996 and 2008. As co-founder and editor of that journal, Henry Mattox addressed contemporary issues, expressing opinions and judgments and recounting experiences drawn from his service as a career Foreign Service officer and, later, as a senior lecturer in American and diplomatic history. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training has included the book in its Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series.

THE ASSOCIATION FOR DIPLOMATIC STUDIES AND TRAINING (see ADST.org) has selected this memoir for inclusion in its "Memoirs and Occasional Papers" series. Lu Rudel describes his unique experiences with US foreign economic aid programs during some of the most dramatic international events since World War II. These include Iran after the fall of Mosaddegh (1956-1960); Turkey after the military coup of 1960 to the start of the Cuba Missile crisis; India after the death of Nehru (1965-1970); and Pakistan following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. Rudel's firsthand observations on Iran differ markedly from the description of events commonly espoused by some historians and journalists. He also provides a firsthand account of the political metamorphosis over the past half-century of the "Group of 77" nations as they attempted to employ the UN's economic development agencies to press for a "New International Economic Order." These experiences lead him to draw important lessons about the conduct and effectiveness of foreign aid. After retirement in 1980 he launched a second career, applying lessons learned from his work in international development to creation of a thousand-acre land development and resort in rural Appalachia. His experiences over the following thirty years as an entrepreneur track the relentless growth of government regulations and the disappearance of community support institutions such as local banks, now being replaced by mega-banks. Finally, he examines global trends of the past eighty years in four critical areas of change affecting our lives-population growth, science and technology, economic systems, and political structures-to draw some surprising conclusions and projections. Photos that accompany the text may be accessed through the web site: www.rudel.net

The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths.

Enjoy the timeless tales of Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and many more in this first volume of The Arabian Nights. Upon learning of his queen’s infidelity, proud King Shahryar has her killed. As revenge on womankind, he decides to wed a different virgin every night, only to have her beheaded at dawn. Such is Shahryar’s practice for three terrible years—until he weds Scheherazade, the maiden who will change his life.... A breathtaking beauty, Scheherazade is as learned as she is sensuous. Her first night with the king, she uses her imagination, her eloquence, and more than a little cunning to regale him with a tale of genies and wishes, wisely cutting the story short at dawn. The king is so beguiled, he cannot have her murdered without hearing the story’s end. From then on, Scheherazade spends nights conjuring stories of flying carpets and fantastical journeys, always stopping with a cliff-hanger—and saving her own life. This edition follows the unexpurgated translation of Richard F. Burton, the renowned Victorian explorer. Intricate and inventive, these stories within stories continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries.

This work comprises a literary comparison of surviving alternative versions of selected narrative-cycles from the Nights. Pinault draws on the published Arabic editions — especially Bulaq, MacNaghten, and the fourteenth-century Galland text recently edited by Mahdi — as well as unpublished Arabic manuscripts from libraries in France and North Africa. The study demonstrates that significantly different versions have survived of some of the most famous tales from the Nights. Pinault notes how individual manuscript redactors employed — and sometimes modified — formulaic phrases and traditional narrative topoi in ways consonant with the themes emphasized in particular versions of a tale. He also examines the redactors' modification of earlier sources — Arabic chronicles and Islamic religious treatises, geographers' accounts and medieval legends — for specific narrative goals. Comparison of the narrative structure of diverse story-collection also sheds new light on the relationship of the embedded subordinate-narrative to the overarching frame-tale. All cited passages from the Nights and other Arabic story- collections have been fully translated into English.