The Adventures of Arab

In this issue:

COMMENT
"Back to the Square", by Wendell Steavenson: Egypt at the polls.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
"Birds and Bankers", by Lizzie Widdicombe: Henry Paulson, bird-watching in Central Park.
"Puppet Reboot", by Michael Schulman: Jason Segel writes The Muppets.

ANNALS OF SCIENCE
"The Power of Nothing", by Michael Specter: Do placebos work?

THE SPORTING SCENE
"Monday Night Lights", by Kelefa Sanneh: Jon Gruden coaches the audience.

A CRITIC AT LARGE
"I Spy", by Anthony Lane: John le Carre’s spies.

THE CURRENT CINEMA
"Double Dare", by David Denby: Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Adventures of Tintin.

In 2004 I compiled a book entitled “I Remember It Well”, comprised of letters home, travel essays and extracts from my diaries covering a twenty month period, following the completion of my university studies, from 1965-1967, during which time I hitchhiked, youth-hosteled and worked my way throughout most of Western Europe. I concluded that document by noting that over the intervening years I continued to travel abroad and indicated that I was planning a five week trip to Australia in November, 2004. I did take that trip, preceded the year before by a trip to Morocco and Egypt.

During these trips I began to write periodic travelogues which I e-mailed home to members of my family and a few friends, reflecting my impressions of the people and the sites that I experienced in the various places that I visited. By 2006 I had fallen into the pleasant practice of usually taking one major trip abroad every year and I began seriously and regularly to write travelogues of my day-to-day activities and impressions of the diverse locales that I had visited. In addition, during the past decade, I also traveled extensively in the United States of America taking shorter mini trips.

I have retained copies of those travelogues, covering my travels abroad during the period 2006-2018, and have incorporated into them numerous photographs which I took with my point and shoot camera during those trips. This series of books, “Keeping On Keeping On”, demonstrates that, if you are comfortably retired and in good health, there is nothing to stop you from keeping on keeping on traveling until you can no longer keep on.traveling, which is something I hope to continue to do for quite some time.

I have often been asked what stands out in terms of the most memorable places I have visited. Over the years it has become increasingly clear to me that what scenes are most etched in my travel memories are the natural beauty and unspoiled wildlife in so many parts of the world. Among my favourites are Antarctica, Halong Bay in Vietnam, the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, the Iguassu Falls in Argentina and Brazil, the desert near Wadi Rhum in Jordan, the Ngorongoro and the Serengeti National Parks in Tanzania, the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, the Joshua Tree National Park in California and the Acadia National Park in Maine, U.S.A..

In 2004 I compiled a book entitled “I Remember It Well”, comprised of letters home, travel essays and extracts from my diaries covering a twenty month period, following the completion of my university studies, from 1965-1967, during which time I hitchhiked, youth-hosteled and worked my way throughout most of Western Europe. I concluded that document by noting that over the intervening years I continued to travel abroad and indicated that I was planning a five week trip to Australia in November, 2004. I did take that trip, preceded the year before by a trip to Morocco and Egypt.

During these trips I began to write periodic travelogues which I e-mailed home to members of my family and a few friends, reflecting my impressions of the people and the sites that I experienced in the various places that I visited. By 2006 I had fallen into the pleasant practice of usually taking one major trip abroad every year and I began seriously and regularly to write travelogues of my day-to-day activities and impressions of the diverse locales that I had visited. In addition, during the past decade, I also traveled extensively in the United States of America taking shorter mini trips.

I have retained copies of those travelogues, covering my travels abroad during the period 2006-2018, and have incorporated into them numerous photographs which I took with my point and shoot camera during those trips. This series of books, “Keeping On Keeping On”, demonstrates that, if you are comfortably retired and in good health, there is nothing to stop you from keeping on keeping on traveling until you can no longer keep on.traveling, which is something I hope to continue to do for quite some time.

I have often been asked what stands out in terms of the most memorable places I have visited. Over the years it has become increasingly clear to me that what scenes are most etched in my travel memories are the natural beauty and unspoiled wildlife in so many parts of the world. Among my favourites are Antarctica, Halong Bay in Vietnam, the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, the Iguassu Falls in Argentina and Brazil, the desert near Wadi Rhum in Jordan, the Ngorongoro and the Serengeti National Parks in Tanzania, the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, the Joshua Tree National Park in California and the Acadia National Park in Maine, U.S.A..

In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.

Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

An American woman determined to learn the Arabic language travels to the Middle East to pursue her dream in this “witty memoir” (Us Weekly).
 
The shadda is the key difference between a pigeon (hamam) and a bathroom (hammam). Be careful, our professor advised, that you don’t ask a waiter, ‘Excuse me, where is the pigeon?’—or, conversely, order a roasted toilet . . . 
 
If you’ve ever studied a foreign language, you know what happens when you first truly and clearly communicate with another person. As Zora O’Neill recalls, you feel like a magician. If that foreign language is Arabic, you just might feel like a wizard.
 
They say that Arabic takes seven years to learn and a lifetime to master. O’Neill had put in her time. Steeped in grammar tomes and outdated textbooks, she faced an increasing certainty that she was not only failing to master Arabic, but also driving herself crazy. She took a decade-long hiatus, but couldn’t shake her fascination with the language or the cultures it had opened up to her. So she decided to jump back in—this time with a new approach.
 
In this book, she takes us along on her grand tour through the Middle East, from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates to Lebanon and Morocco. She’s packed her dictionaries, her unsinkable sense of humor, and her talent for making fast friends of strangers. From quiet, bougainvillea-lined streets to the lively buzz of crowded medinas, from families’ homes to local hotspots, she brings a part of the world thousands of miles away right to your door—and reminds us that learning another tongue leaves you rich with so much more than words.
 
“You will travel through countries and across centuries, meeting professors and poets, revolutionaries, nomads, and nerds . . . [A] warm and hilarious book.” —Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey
 
“Her tale of her ‘Year of Speaking Arabic Badly’ is a genial and revealing pleasure.” —The Seattle Times

Turkey, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia

The “Arab Spring” all started when a young Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire in protest of a government official confiscating his apples and slapping his face. The aftermath of that one personal protest grew to become the Middle East movement known as the Arab Spring—a wave of disparate events that included protests, revolutions, hopeful reform movements, and bloody civil wars.

The Fires of Spring is the first book to bring the post-Arab Spring world to light in a holistic context. A narrative of author Shelly Culbertson’s journey through six countries of the Middle East, The Fires of Spring tells the story by weaving together a sense of place, insight about issues of our time, interviews with leaders, history, and personal stories. Culbertson navigates the nuances of street life and peers into ministries, mosques, and women’s worlds. She delves into what Arab Spring optimism was about, and at the same time sheds light on the pain and dysfunction that continues to plague parts of the region. The Fires of Spring blends reportage, travel memoir, and analysis in this complex and multifaceted portrait.

The five Countries covered in this book, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman--are all Arab states on the Persian Gulf that share certain characteristics. But they are not the only countries that border the gulf. Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia share the coastline as well, and they too shared in the historical development of the area. Of the five states covered in this book, Oman has a particular culture and history that distinguish it from its neighbors. It also is the state with the shortest coastline along the Persian Gulf. Most of Oman lies along the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The main element that unites these countries is the nature of their involvement with people and nations beyond the region. In this book you will be detailing with the history information of each of the five states, Government, Politics, ruling system, Economy and more

The first in Baker's trillogy of his explorations of the Nile and ultimately efforts to suppress the Arab slave trade down the Nile.
In this volume Baker and his wife explore the tributaries of the Blue Nile, confirming and expanding Bruce's explorations of a century earlier.

Contents
Detective Stories From Real Life
A Flight into Texas by Arthur Train

P. H. Woodward -
Adventures in the Secret Service of the Post-Office Department
An Erring Shepherd
An Aspirant for Congress
The Fortune of Seth Savage
A Wish Unexpectedly Gratified
An Old Game Revived
A Formidable Weapon
Andrew Lang -
Saint-Germain the Deathless
The Man in the Iron Mask
The Legend
The Valet's History
The Valet's Master
Original Papers in the Case of Roux De Marsilly
True Stories of Modern Magic
M. Robert-Houdin -
A Conjurer's Confessions
Self-Training
"Second Sight"
The Magician Who Became an Ambassador
Facing the Arab's Pistol
David P. Abbott -
Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled
A Doctor of the Occult
How the Tricks Succeeded
The Name of the Dead
Mind Reading in Public
Some Famous Exposures
Hereward Carrington -
More Tricks of "Spiritualism"
"Matter through Matter"
Deception Explained by the Science of Psychology
Anonymous - 
How Spirits Materialize

It was the legendary traveller Wilfred Thesiger who first introduced Gavin Young to the Marshes of Iraq. Since then Young has been entranced by both the beauty of the Marshes and by the Marsh Arabs who inhabit them, a people whose lifestyle is almost unchanged from that of their predecessors, the Ancient Sumerians.

On his return to the Marshes some years later Gavin Young found that the twentieth-century had rudely intruded on this lifestyle and that war was threatening to make the Marsh Arabs existence extinct. Return to the Marshes, first published in 1977, is at once a moving tribute to a unique way of life as well as a love story to a place and its people.

'A superbly written essay which combines warmth of personal tone, a good deal of easy historical scholarship and a talent for vivid description rarely found outside good fiction.' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times

This book is perfectly adapted and layout, for a pleasant reading on a tablet, smartphone or computer. You can download a free sample of this book to test on your device.

Keywords: Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures -

(Excerpt): Every one has heard of those ponies—those shaggy, chubby, innocent-looking little creatures—for which the world is indebted, we suppose, to Shetland. Well, once on a time, one of the most innocent-looking, chubbiest, and shaggiest of Shetland ponies—a dark brown one—stood at the door of a mansion in the west-end of London. It was attached to a wickerwork vehicle which resembled a large clothes-basket on small wheels. We do not mean, of course, that the pony was affectionately attached to it. No; the attachment was involuntary and unavoidable, by reason of a brand-new yellow leather harness with brass buckles. It objected to the attachment, obviously, for it sidled this way, and straddled that way, and whisked its enormous little tail, and tossed its rotund little head, and stamped its ridiculously small feet; and champed its miniature bit, as if it had been a war-horse of the largest size, fit to carry a Wallace, a Bruce, or a Richard of the Lion-heart, into the midst of raging battle. And no wonder; for many months had not elapsed since that brown creature had kicked up its little heels, and twirled its tail, and shaken its shaggy mane in all the wild exuberance of early youth and unfettered freedom on the heather hills of its native island.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

(Excerpt): "Every one has heard of those ponies—those shaggy, chubby, innocent-looking little creatures—for which the world is indebted, we suppose, to Shetland. Well, once on a time, one of the most innocent-looking, chubbiest, and shaggiest of Shetland ponies—a dark brown one—stood at the door of a mansion in the west-end of London. It was attached to a wickerwork vehicle which resembled a large clothes-basket on small wheels. We do not mean, of course, that the pony was affectionately attached to it. No; the attachment was involuntary and unavoidable, by reason of a brand-new yellow leather harness with brass buckles. It objected to the attachment, obviously, for it sidled this way, and straddled that way, and whisked its enormous little tail, and tossed its rotund little head, and stamped its ridiculously small feet; and champed its miniature bit, as if it had been a war-horse of the largest size, fit to carry a Wallace, a Bruce, or a Richard of the Lion-heart, into the midst of raging battle. And no wonder; for many months had not elapsed since that brown creature had kicked up its little heels, and twirled its tail, and shaken its shaggy mane in all the wild exuberance of early youth and unfettered freedom on the heather hills of its native island."

The FICTION & PROSE LITERATURE collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. The collection provides readers with a perspective of the world from some of the 18th and 19th century’s most talented writers. Written for a range of audiences, these works are a treasure for any curious reader looking to see the world through the eyes of ages past. Beyond the main body of works the collection also includes song-books, comedy, and works of satire.

This book is the first to explore Arabic tourism from a business viewpoint, rather than taking a sociological, anthropological or political stance. It focuses on business planning, management and marketing destinations in the Arab World, which are topics crucial for industry stakeholders and which have previously been neglected in the tourism literature. The book examines similarities and differences in the emergence and development of the tourism industry in countries across the Arab world as well as its inbound and outbound travel flows. It analyses several different aspects of Arabic tourism including tourism policy, organisation and planning, tourism product development, destination marketing and consumer behaviour. This volume will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of tourism studies, business and Middle Eastern studies.

Another classic converted by eBooksLib.com.THE work entitled The Albert N'yanza Great Basin of the Nile, published in 1866, has given an account of the equatorial lake system from which the Egyptian river derives its source. It has been determined by the joint explorations of Speke, Grant, and myself, that the rainfall of the equatorial districts supplies two vast lakes, the Victoria and the Albert, of sufficient volume to support the Nile throughout its entire course of thirty degrees of latitude

pubOne.info present you this new edition. THE work entitled “The Albert N'yanza Great Basin of the Nile, ” published in 1866, has given an account of the equatorial lake system from which the Egyptian river derives its source. It has been determined by the joint explorations of Speke, Grant, and myself, that the rainfall of the equatorial districts supplies two vast lakes, the Victoria and the Albert, of sufficient volume to support the Nile throughout its entire course of thirty degrees of latitude. Thus the parent stream, fed by never-failing reservoirs, supplied by the ten months' rainfall of the equator, rolls steadily on its way through arid sands and burning deserts until it reaches the Delta of Lower Egypt.

A crown should not be worn upon the head. A sceptre should not be carried in Kings’ hands. But a crown should be wrought into a golden chain, and a sceptre driven stake-wise into the ground so that a King may be chained to it by the ankle. Then he would know that he might not stray away into the beautiful desert and might never see the palm trees by the wells. O Thalanna, Thalanna, how I hate this city with its narrow, narrow ways, and evening after evening drunken men playing skabash in the scandalous gambling house of that old scoundrel Skarmi. O that I might marry the child of some unkingly house that generation to generation had never known a city, and that we might ride from here down the long track through the desert, always we two alone till we came to the tents of the Arabs. And the crown—some foolish, greedy man should be given it to his sorrow. And all this may not be, for a King is yet a King.

The Man in the Iron Mask-
Essay about the legend/history behind Alexander Dumas' novel. According to Wikipedia: "Andrew Lang (March 31, 1844, Selkirk - July 20, 1912, Banchory, Kincardineshire) was a prolific Scots man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales.

Saint-Germain the Deathless-
Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's Notch on the Axe in Roundabout Papers.* Both deal with a mysterious being who passes through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely— you never find authentic evidence of his disease. In other later times, at other courts, such an one reappears and runs the same course of luxury, marvel, and hidden potency.

The Marsh Arabs were one of the most isolated communities in the world. Few outsiders, let alone Europeans, had been permitted to travel through their homeland, a mass of tiny islands lost in a wilderness of reeds and swamps in southern Iraq. One of the few trusted outsiders was the legendary explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who was Gavin Maxwell’s guide to the intricate landscape, tribal customs and distinctive architecture of the Marsh Arabs. Thesiger’s skill with a medicine chest and rifle assured them a welcome in every hamlet, and Maxwell’s sharp observation, honed as a naturalist and writer, has left an invaluable record of a unique community and a now-vanished way of life.