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Genghis Khan: Makers of History Series Illustrated Edition Jacob Abbott Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was the founder, Khan (ruler) and Khagan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed "Genghis Khan", he started the Mongol invasions that would devastate most of Eurasia. These included raids of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were often accompanied by wholesale massacres of the civilian populations - especially in Khwarezmia. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China. Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and split his empire into khanates among his sons and grandsons. Beyond his great military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire's writing system. He also promoted religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, and created a unified empire from the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. Present-day Mongolians regard him highly as the founding father of Mongolia. |
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Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit. |
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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan
With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. |
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War Sebastian Junger |
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WHERE MEN WIN GLORY: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman Jon Krakauer |
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Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story Of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan Doug Stanton Every young man should read this! |
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Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics) Thomas Barfield Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate. |
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Charlie Wilson's War George Crile Crile's book is the true story of how a Texas Congressman and a rogue CIA agent conspired to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful CIA campaign ever -- the operation to fund the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet army that had invaded Afghanistan. Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol to secret chambers at Langley, from arms dealers' conventions to the Khyber Pass, Charlie Wilson's War presents an astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam. |
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Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition Ahmed Rashid Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban—the world’s most extreme and radical Islamic organization—into sharp focus in this enormously insightful book. He offers the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers, explaining the Taliban’s rise to power, its impact on Afghanistan and the region, its role in oil and gas company decisions, and the effects of changing American attitudes toward the Taliban. He also describes the new face of Islamic fundamentalism and explains why Afghanistan has become the world center for international terrorism.
New to this updated edition of the #1 New York Times Bestseller with more than 1.5 million copies sold worldwide:
o How the Taliban has regained its strength
o How and why the Taliban has spread across Central Asia
o How the Taliban has helped Al’Qaida’s spread into Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East
o Why the Afghan people feel the United States is losing the war
o A major new introduction and an all-new final chapter |
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The Travels of Marco Polo - Complete [Illustrated] Marco Polo, Henri Cordier, Henry Yule Chronicling the 13th-century world from Venice, Marco Polo's birthplace, to the far reaches of Asia, Marco Polo tells of the foreign peoples he meets as he travels by foot, horse, and boat through places including Persia, Tibet, India, and, finally, China.
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