Chris Cryer's account of life in Saudi Arabia is about real people, not stereotypes In 1982 Chris Cryer was living with her fourteen-year-old son, Marc, in Alabama, where she owned and ran a Montessori preschool. When the opportunity came to spend a year in Saudi Arabia, teaching English to women at King Saud University, she was tempted, Marc was enthusiastic, and so began a life-changing adventure for both of them. What Chris found in Saudi Arabia was a world of wonders: lonely mountains and desert, graced by graciousness and generosity. She was impressed by the sound of the call to prayer, the stark, striking landscape, the grandeur of what was then the most highly financed university in the world, the exotic aromas of the restaurants in Riyadh, and nonstop acts of random public kindness. Chris also found difficulties. The gender segregation of buses was a constant problem for social, professional, and practical life. The matawa (moral police) busted up gatherings of women in the souks and on the streets. A Byzantine aura crept into relations at the university. The winter grew bitter and cold, and she became homesick. Chris took on the forbidden Men's College to renegotiate her place in the system, eventually sitting on a U.N. committee of three to develop the first preschool training program for King Saud University. She introduced the Montessori Method to the plan. Meanwhile, Marc assimilated well. Naturally social, he made friends with Saudi neighbors and became the responsible, competent “man of the house” required by custom. He learned Arabic, adopted Saudi dress, and worked his way from tea server to translator. Tolstoy remained Chris's close companion throughout the year. She makes a good case for believing that Tolstoy would have found much to admire and enjoy in Arabia. His wisdom works as a recurrent subtext in this memoir of discovery, helping Chris sort out the experience of a lifetime. When the time came for Chris and Marc to go, they felt they were leaving their second home. This book was written to elucidate the sincerity of a culture that reaches out for modernity with one hand and halts progress that threatens Meccan tradition with the other. The book serves as an important antidote to Islamophobia.

In 1982, Chris Cryer spent a year in Saudi Arabia, teaching English to women at King Saud University. Accompanied by her fourteen-year-old son, and a few books by and about Leo Tolstoy, Chris found a sense of connection where she least expected it. The fast-moving, slightly comic, always fascinating adventure pulls us directly into the journey. We come to respect and love the mother-son duo for their unprejudiced outlook and their cool-headed survival of matawas (moral police), strict laws, and customs. This book is one of very few based on true events, written from the inside out, that show the Arab side in the Islamic world, a place long held in mystery under the dark images of Western media. The author presents the Saudi culture at that time with a sensitivity to their need to preserve values and traditions in the face of modernity.

This book analyzes the impact and relevance of the Syrian crisis on regional and international relations. Developing into a proxy war, the Syrian crisis has been a battleground for regional dominance. It has also created an opportunity for new states to emerge on the world affairs scene. Russia, for instance, had been keeping a low profile since the fall of the Soviet Union, but took a leading role in the Syrian crisis reasserting itself against the West regionally. The Syrian crisis has also been a catalyst in reshaping many interstate relations and allowing countries such as Russia, Iran, Turkey and China to play an increasingly important geopolitical role. There have been many international ramifications to the Syrian crisis. While the crisis led to an Iranian-Russian rapprochement, it was also a catalyst to more cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia; more importantly, it also forced states with opposing views about the crisis -- Turkey, Iran and Russia -- to forge an alliance. Further, the crisis created tensions between the US and Turkey with China on the one hand balancing its interests between the Gulf and Iran whilst focusing on its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative and trying on the other hand to contain Islamic militancy in Syria. The book looks at issues that are usually ignored when discussing Syria such as the strategic control over its hydrocarbon resources, as well as the power of propaganda in portraying realities. It features the use of non-state actors by regional competing powers and the role of local councils in stabilizing the country. The edited volume brings together contributions by authors with different backgrounds who present conflicting views reflecting the divergence between the various stakeholders about the Syrian crisis.

In The Ethics of Death, the authors, one a philosopher and one a religious studies scholar, undertake an examination of the deaths that we experience as members of a larger moral community. Their respectful and engaging dialogue highlights the complex and challenging issues that surround many deaths in our modern world and helps readers frame thoughtful responses. Unafraid of difficult topics, Steffen and Cooley fully engage suicide, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, and war as areas of life where death poses moral challenges.

Integrating interviews with individuals ranging from senior policymakers to frontline soldiers, a look at the Persian Gulf War shows how the conflict transformed modern warfare.