Bye Bye Gaza

A seventeen-year-old from Jerusalem, Tal Levine comes from a family that always believed peace would come to the Middle East. She cried tears of joy when President Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat in 1993-a moment of hope that would stay with her forever. But when a terrorist explosion kills a young woman at a café in Jerusalem, something changes for Tal. One day she writes a letter, puts it in a bottle, and sends it to Gaza-to the other side-beginning a correspondence with a young Palestinian man that will ultimately open their eyes to each other's lives and hearts.

All Palestinians are terrorists. They are an invented people. They are an inferior people. This is what some of our most prominent politicians and congressionals tell us and our national media broadcasts and publishes for us. Palestinians (and Arabs) are always the bad guys. Israelis are always the good guys. This ideology is at the heart of U.S. foreign policy that has gotten America involved in two Middle East wars and headed for a third. It has alienated Americans from the entire Middle East, causing a loss of trust and credibility among most other countries. But wait. Aren't there always two sides to every story? Why is it that we never hear the Palestinian side of the story? What would happen if Americans found out that each and every day more Palestinian land is being stolen, their houses demolished, their crops destroyed, children imprisoned without charges, and demonstrators eliminated by non-judicial execution? Might we want to find out more about why our government is complicit in this travesty and who exactly it is in America facilitating such an assault on human rights and justice. How and why did we as Americans become an accomplice, and what benefit is there for us? Holy Land Conversations is an anthology of stories depicting life under military occupation as told by Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza; It becomes a treatise derived from travel in the Holy Land by the author and subsequent research and discovery to uncover the various forces that are involved in the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population -- why and how the Palestinians have become dispossessed, denigrated, and denied their basic human rights.

Pocket Watch is an epic and abstract fantasy adventure following the adventures of a young adult who finds himself in an alternate plane of existence, an ancient fantasy land with heavy philosophical, spiritual, and psychological influences. William winds up following his new friends through the once great land of Amplexus, now known as Belique, as they try to loosen the Empire's oppressive grip while he himself struggles with trying to find acceptance, love, and himself through long journeys, epic battles, and dizzying debates and dialogues.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the former national security advisor and secretary of state comes a “sharp and penetrating . . . reminder that foreign-policy choices facing the United States are complex and difficult, with no easy solutions” (The Washington Post). A native of Birmingham, Alabama, who overcame the racism of the civil rights era to become a brilliant academic and expert on foreign affairs, Condoleezza Rice first distinguished herself as an advisor to George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign, and eventually became one of his closest confidantes. Once he was elected, she served first as his chief advisor on national security issues and later as America’s chief diplomat. From the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when she stood at the center of the administration’s efforts to protect the nation, to her efforts as secretary of state to manage the world’s volatile relationships with North Korea, Iran, and Libya, her service to America led her to confront some of the worst crises the country has ever faced. This is her unflinchingly honest story of that remarkable time, from what really went on behind closed doors when the fates of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon often hung in the balance and how frighteningly close all-out war loomed in clashes involving Pakistan-India and Russia-Georgia, to her candid appraisal of her colleagues and contemporaries. In No Higher Honor, Condoleezza Rice delivers a master class in statecraft—but always in a way that reveals her essential warmth and humility and her deep reverence for the ideals on which America was founded.

Professor Julie Peteet believes that the concept of mobility is key to understanding how place and space act as forms of power, identity, and meaning among Palestinians in Israel today. In Space and Mobility in Palestine, she investigates how Israeli policies of closure and separation influence Palestinian concerns about constructing identity, the ability to give meaning to place, and how Palestinians comprehend, experience, narrate, and respond to Israeli settler-colonialism. Peteet’s work sheds new light on everyday life in the Occupied Territories and helps explain why regional peace may be difficult to achieve in the foreseeable future.