Inside Islam: The Faith, the People and the Conflicts of the World's Fastest Growing Religion

The Colored Museum

The Colored Museum has electrified, discomforted, and delighted audiences of all colors, redefining our ideas of what it means to be black in contemporary America. Its eleven "exhibits" undermine black stereotypes old and new, and return to the facts of w

The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca

The Hadj, or sacred journey, is the pilgrimage to the house of God at Mecca that all Muslims are asked to make once in their lifetimes. One of the world’s longest-lived religious rites, having continued without break for fourteen hundred years, it is, l

One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage

The pilgrimage to Mecca, or the Hajj, is a journey all Muslims are enjoined to make once in their lifetimes. Its purpose is to detach human beings from their homes and, by bringing them to Islam's birthplace, to emphasize the equality of all people before

Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization

Globalization, the war on terror, and Islamic fundamentalism—followed closely by a rise in Islamophobia—have escalated tensions between Western nations and the Muslim world. Yet internationally renowned Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed believes that throug

The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this

Journey into America

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

With an easy command of history, philosophy and current affairs, 'The Future of Freedom' calls for a restoration of the balance between liberty and democracy, and shows how liberal democracy has to be made effective and relevant for our time.

Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over

As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe,

Noa Noa

In 1894, Paul Gauguin left what he considered to be a culturally bereft Europe to live an unfettered life in a tropical paradiseTahiti. It was there that he produced some of his most beautiful and best-known paintings, as well as another masterpiece: this