"The Great Arab Revolt of 1936 in the Holy Land lasted three years, cost thousands of lives-Jewish, British, and Arab-and cast the trajectory for the Middle East conflict ever since. It radicalized the Jewish and Arab communities and made the separation permanent. This book reveals world-changing events through extraordinary people on all sides"--

Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of desctuction at the hands of Al Quaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali.

From Israel's most important filmaker, Carmel is Amos Gitai's (Kadosh, Kippur) deeply personal and resonant meditation on Jewish and Israeli identity. Using both fiction and documentary techniques, Gitai links his family history to ancient history. Through exquisitely composed long takes, he re-enacts the Jewish-Roman wars that began in 66 A.D. , and contrasts them to the young soldiers enlisting in Israel's army today, including his own son, making...

"On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, 'No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.' Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most...

China, 1898. Bands of foreign missionaries and soldiers roam the countryside, bullying and robbing Chinese peasants. Little Bao has had enough. Harnessing the powers of ancient Chinese gods, he recruits an army of Boxers - commoners trained in kung fu who fight to free China from "foreign devils." Against all odds, this grass-roots rebellion is violently successful. But nothing is simple. Little Bao is fighting for the glory of China, but at what...

"Chief of Police Kate Burkholder down a dark path to danger and death. When a young woman is found murdered in a Painters Mill motel, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is shocked to discover she once knew the victim. Rachael Schwartz was a charming but troubled Amish girl who left the fold years ago and fled Painters Mill. Why was she back in town? And who would kill her so brutally? Kate remembers Rachael as the only girl who was as bad at being Amish...

It’s early afternoon, May 1, 1955 — and Donald McWilliams finds himself with other British soldiers in Ndyeia Gorge in central Kenya. At their feet a Mau Mau fighter lies dying, mortally wounded by their gunfire. Above them all, the vast skies of the Rift Valley. McWilliams is hardly out of his teens — a child of wartime London, stationed to Kenya for his national service. Raised on the romance of Empire, he’d imagined a great African adventure....

Historian Michael Cathcart tells the epic story of how the colourful characters of early colonial Australia transformed a penal settlement into a land with rights and opportunity in a mere 40 years. This sweeping two-part dramatised documentary covers formative events in Australia's history, including the Rum Rebellion and early court cases, which established independence and civil rights for all settlers. Rogue Nation explores how a fledgling colony...