The news media was driving everyone crazy. It started with Y2K, then the Bush/Gore presidential election controversy, the Clinton pardons, the September 11th attacks, and the anthrax letters. Wars subsequently ensued against Afghanistan, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Iraq, but not without fierce exchanges with the United Nations. Sex and financial scandals erupted involving the Catholic Church and Wall Street. Massive layoffs, soaring debt and skyrocketing college tuition added to these. The media never missed a beat. Was there no escaping them? The Nation's Capitol in commemorating last years September 11th attacks, was also preparing for an upcoming mayoral election. The current incumbent was expected to breeze toward reelection, but what followed seemed like a page out of William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. This prompted a virtual unknown to launch a comedy contest to provide some comic relief for the city from this onslaught of negative news. Only four contestants remained to compete for the prize money. However, only Archie Harris, one of the four finalists showed up at the finale. More bad news? What will happen now? Find out by reading Post-9/11 African American Style, Laughter, Still Da Best Medicine.

“[A] wickedly funny Philadelphia picaresque about a secular Muslim’s identity crisis in a country waging a never-ending war on terror.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Ali Eteraz’s much-anticipated debut novel is the story of M., a supportive husband, adventureless dandy, lapsed believer, and second-generation immigrant who wants nothing more than to host parties and bring children into the world as full-fledged Americans. As M.’s life gradually fragments around him—a wife with a chronic illness, a best friend stricken with grief, a boss jeopardizing a respectable career—M. spins out into the pulsating underbelly of Philadelphia, where he encounters others grappling with fallout from the war on terror. Among the pornographers and converts to Islam, punks and wrestlers, M. confronts his existential degradation and the life of a second-class citizen. Darkly comic, provocative, and insightful, Native Believer is a startling vision of the contemporary American experience and the human capacity to shape identity and belonging at all costs. “Native Believer stands as an important contribution to American literary culture: a book quite unlike any I’ve read in recent memory, which uses its characters to explore questions vital to our continuing national discourse around Islam.” —The New York Times Book Review “A page-turning contemporary fiction that addresses burning issues about the very essence of identity, and without question Ali Eteraz is a writer’s writer, one whose ear for the English language is just as acute as fellow naturalized Americans Vladimir Nabokov (born in Russia) or Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnam).” —Los Angeles Review of Books

This New York Times bestseller recounts the true story of the touching gift bestowed on the US by the Maasai people in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In June of 2002, a mere nine months since the September 11 attacks, a very unusual ceremony begins in a far-flung village in western Kenya. An American diplomat is surrounded by hundreds of Maasai people. A gift is about to be bestowed upon the American men, women, and children, and he is there to accept it. The gift is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. Hearts are raw as these legendary Maasai warriors offer their gift to a grieving people half a world away. Word of the gift will travel newswires around the globe, and for the heartsick American nation, the gift of fourteen cows emerges from the choking dust and darkness as a soft light of hope―and friendship. With stunning paintings from Thomas Gonzalez, master storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy (in collaboration with Naiyomah) hits all the right notes in this elegant story of generosity that crosses boundaries, nations, and cultures.

The most comprehensive account to date of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and aftermath, this volume includes unprecedented details on the impact on the Pentagon building and personnel and the scope of the rescue, recovery, and caregiving effort. It features 32 pages of photographs and more than a dozen diagrams and illustrations not previously available.

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

This meticulously researched, forcibly argued and accessibly written collection explores the many and complex ways in which Africa has been implicated in the discourses and politics of September 11, 2001. Written by key scholars based in leading institutions in Canada, the United States, the Middle East and Africa, the volume interrogates the impact of post-9/11 politics on Africa from many disciplinary perspectives, including political science, sociology, history, anthropology, religious studies and cultural studies. The essays analyze the impact of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' on political dissent and academic freedom; the contentious vocabulary of crusades, clash of civilizations, barbarism and 'Islamofascism'; alternative genealogies of local and global terrorism; extraordinary renditions to black sites and torture; human rights and insecurities; collapsed states and the development-security merger; and anti-terrorism policies from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. This is a much-needed meditation on historical and contemporary discourses on terrorism.