Green On Blue

A "debut novel about a young Afghan orphan and the harrowing, intractable nature of war"--Amazon.com.

On a block dressed up in Red and Green one house shone Blue and White. It's a holiday season that both Isaac, whose family is Jewish, and Teresa, whose family is Christian, have looked forward to for months! They've been counting the days, playing in the snow, making cookies, drawing (Teresa) and writing poems (Isaac). They enjoy all the things they share, as well as the things that make them different. But when Isaac's window is smashed in the middle of the night, it seems like maybe not everyone appreciates "difference." Inspired by a true story, this is a tale of a community that banded together to spread light.

From the author of Waiting for Eden and the National Book Award Finalist Dark at the Crossing, a “compassionate, provocative, and alive” (Vogue.com) debut war story about a young Afghan orphan, “Green on Blue is harrowing, brutal, and utterly absorbing. With spare prose, Ackerman has spun a morally complex tale of revenge, loyalty, and brotherly love” (Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner). Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine. One day a convoy of armed men arrives in their village and their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they gradually begin to piece together their lives. But when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured. To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. As he rises through the ranks, Aziz becomes mired in the dark underpinnings of his country’s war, witnessing clashes between rival Afghan groups—what US soldiers call “green on green” attacks—and those on US forces by Afghan soldiers, violence known as “green on blue.” Trapped in a conflict both savage and contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother—and a young woman he has come to love—in jeopardy? Green on Blue has broken new ground in the literature of our most recent wars, accomplishing an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination. Writing from the Afghan perspective, “Elliot Ackerman has done something brave as a writer and even braver as a soldier: He has touched, for real, the culture and soul of his enemy” (The New York Times Book Review).

"Struggling musician Erik Dieter returns home for his mother's funeral and, under strange circumstances, finds a photograph of a late sixties jazz musician. The search for this musican's identity will soon become an obsession that will take Erik down the spiralling depths of his ambitions--a journey that will erode his faith in reality, forcing him to confront the horrors of his own great expectations."--Page [4] of cover.

This open access book highlights Singapore’s development into a city in which water and greenery, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a liveable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements.

When Singapore became a sovereign state in 1965, the fledgling nation faced very similar problems as most other developing countries: high unemployment, low standard of living, and poor environmental conditions. In a scant four decades, it has become the 6th wealthiest country in the world in terms of per capita GDP and has managed its environment so well that it is now considered to be one of the best in the world. In this remarkable book, Tan Yong Soon authoritatively and objectively analyses how the environmental conditions were radically transformed within this period, and the enabling conditions which made this extraordinary transformation possible. This book will unquestionably make all Singaporeans proud of their environmental achievements, and at the same time enable other countries, both developed and developing, to learn many lessons from a most remarkable success story. This book is a must read for any individual interested in environment-development issues. -Prof Asit K. Biswas, President, Third World Centre for Water Management, Mexico and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore.

In a love story set on the Turkish border of Syria, an Arab American with a conflicted past attempts to join the fight against Bashar al-Assad's regime before the plight of his host family reshapes his loyalties.

Discover the joys of nature, seasons, family—and the vibrant colors of them all—in this lyrical picture book from the author of the acclaimed Blue on Blue. A child is on a colorful journey through the seasons, filled with yellow flowers and blue coral in spring and summer and orange pumpkins and green pine forests in fall and winter. All the while, there is another colorful change on the horizon—the birth of a new sibling. With gentle, rhyming text and vivid artwork, this book is a heartfelt celebration of family, nature, seasons, colors, and the wonder and magic of them all.