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A Financial Times Travel Book of the Year 2021 Where can travel writing go in the twenty-first century? Author and lifelong travel writing aficionado Tim Hannigan sets out in search of this most venerable of genres, hunting down its legendary practitioners and confronting its greatest controversies. Is it ever okay for travel writers to make things up, and just where does the frontier between fact and fiction lie? What actually is travel writing, and is it just a genre dominated by posh white men? What of travel writing''s queasy colonial connections? Travelling from Monaco to Eton, from wintry Scotland to sun-scorched Greek hillsides, Hannigan swills beer with the indomitable Dervla Murphy, sips tea with the doyen of British explorers, delves into the diaries of Wilfred Thesiger and Patrick Leigh Fermor, and gains unexpected insights from Colin Thubron, Samanth Subramanian, Kapka Kassabova, William Dalrymple and many others. But along the way he realises how much is at stake: can his own love of travel writing survive this journey? The Travel Writing Tribe tackles head on the fierce critical debates usually confined to strictly academic discussions of the genre. This highly original book compels readers and travellers of all kinds to think about travel writing in new ways.

By 2013, Iranians were suffocating, as though the streets had become narrower, the buildings taller, the dirty air thicker. In electing Hassan Rouhani, they chose a new, reformist leader, burying the days when a Holocaust-denying president had pushed Iran to the edge of economic collapse and conflict. But the nation hasn’t quite broken free.Iranians are trying to move on, yet the Islamic Republic remains a prisoner of the past, plagued by US sanctions, a broken economy and the threat of war. After 2016, Donald Trump’s presidency derailed the future of millions of people. How have Iranians met these challenges? What future do they imagine now? Has Iran missed its best chance for real change? Crooked Alleys explores Iran during some of its darkest days, but also its most hopeful.

What might COVID-19 mean for, and reveal about, ChinaΓÇÖs place in the world?The coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan, home to the leading lab studying the SARS virus and bats. Was that pure coincidence? This book explores what we know, and still donΓÇÖt know, about the origins of COVID-19, and how it was handled in China.We may never get all the answers, but much is already clear: ChinaΓÇÖs record as the origin of earlier pandemics, and its struggle to bring contagious diseases under control; its history as both a victim of biological warfare and a developer of deadly bioweapons. When Covid broke out, Wuhan was building science parks to realise BeijingΓÇÖs ambitions in biotech research. Whoever achieves global leadership of the gene-editing industry stands to harvest great power and wealth.China has already challenged Western technological supremacy with 5G and in other industries. Yet this tiny, invisible virus has cruelly exposed a critical flaw in the Chinese political system: obsessive secrecy. The West wanted to trust the PRC, hoping that, as it prospered, it would become an open society. Made in China reveals how BeijingΓÇÖs leaders have betrayed that trust.

When Madian Al Jazerah came out to his Arab parents, his mother had one question. ΓÇÿAre you this?ΓÇÖ she asked, cupping her hand. ΓÇÿOr are you this?ΓÇÖ she motioned with a poking finger. If youΓÇÖre the poker, she said, you arenΓÇÖt a homosexual.For Madian, this opposition reveals not who he is, but patriarchy, power, and societyΓÇÖs efforts to fit us into neat boxes. He is Palestinian, but wasnΓÇÖt raised in Palestine. He is Kuwaiti-born, but not Kuwaiti. HeΓÇÖs British-educated, but not a Westerner. HeΓÇÖs a Muslim, but canΓÇÖt embrace the Islam of today. HeΓÇÖs a gay man, out of the closet but still living in the shadows: he has left Jordan, his home, three times in fear of his life.Madian has searched for acceptance and belonging around the world, joining new communities in San Francisco, New York, Hawaii and Tunisia, yet always finding himself pulled back to Amman. This frank and moving memoir narrates his battles with adversity, racism and homophobia, and a rich life lived with humour, dignity and grace.

In a 1965 letter to 'Newsweek', French writer and academic Bernard Fall (1926-67) staked a claim as the 'Number One Realist' on the Vietnam War. This is the first book to study the thought of this overlooked figure, one of the most important experts on counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina. Nathaniel L. Moir's intellectual history analyses Fall's formative experiences: his service in the French underground and army during the Second World War; his father's execution by the Germans and his mother's murder in Auschwitz; and his work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials. Moir demonstrates how these critical events shaped Fall's trenchant analysis of Viet Minh-led revolutionary warfare during the French-Indochina War and the early Vietnam War. In the years before conventional American intervention in 1965, Fall argued that--far more than anything in the United States' military arsenal--resolving conflict in Vietnam would require political strength, willpower, integrity and skill. 'Number One Realist' illuminates Fall's study of political reconciliation in Indochina, while showing how his profound, humanitarian critique of war continues to echo in the endless conflicts of the present. It will challenge and change the way we think about the Vietnam War.

Radicalisation has become an important part of the twenty-first-century security and political landscape. It is a seemingly ubiquitous term, employed by academics, policymakers, civil society actors, practitioners and media alike, in ever-expanding ways--describing everything from changing domestic social movements to the growth of international terrorism. This volume provides a comprehensive treatment of 'radicalisation': the processes during which individuals or groups adopt increasingly extreme political, social or religious beliefs, positions or aspirations, particularly in cases associated with the use of violence. Adopting a multifaceted and comparative approach, the contributors interrogate this phenomenon from wide-ranging social, ideological, religious and historical angles. The first part of the book explores how academia has engaged with the concept of radicalisation, including the ontological and epistemological concerns of Critical Terrorism Studies; theoretical models for understanding radicalisation; and approaches to radicalisation through the various lenses of identity, gender, youth and media. The second part explores manifestations of radicalisation through a range of diverse case studies, including the Falun Gong movement; Aum Shinrikyo; Far-Right trans-nationalism; white nationalist lone wolves and the 'Great Replacement' thesis; ISIS and Western jihadists; deradicalisation programmes; hero myths; the Extreme Right in Eastern Europe; and the dark side of globalisation.

You are being lied to by people who don''t even exist. Digital deception is the new face of information warfare. Social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities alike, as bots and trolls proliferate and users are left to navigate an infodemic of fake news and disinformation. In the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East, where authoritarian regimes continue to innovate and adapt in the face of changing technology, online deception has reached new levels of audacity. From pro-Saudi entities that manipulate the tweets of the US president, to the activities of fake journalists and Western PR companies that whitewash human rights abuses, Marc Owen Jones'' meticulous investigative research uncovers the full gamut of tactics used by Gulf regimes and their allies to deceive domestic and international audiences. In an age of global deception, this book charts the lengths bad actors will go to when seeking to impose their ideology and views on citizens around the world.

The words that accompany our experience of and thinking about death are rarely uplifting: grief, loss, mourning, and, of course, fear. Death and everything surrounding it can be terrifying. People fear death. People fear dying. People fear missing out. People fear the loss of others, too. The loss of a loved one is undoubtedly a source of fear for many. The fear and sorrow bound up in the term "death" make it a morbid subject. Often, the topic is avoided in conversation. Death is too melancholic. Death is too miserable. Death is too personal. Death can be personal, of course. The ways it affects oneself can be intimate and, by virtue of its closeness, it can be a thoroughly private matter. Death is personal when it is one's own death, perhaps one's contemplation of or attempt at suicide, or the death of someone known and/or loved. Death has a part to play in our past, our present, and (unavoidably) our future. Death is an omnipresent possibility. Hidden in the wings, death waits for its cue before the final curtain call. All of us await this death and it is the future of us all. The death described here is one that almost everyone will be familiar with: the end of a life. However, there is another death. A second death. An impersonal death. A depersonalised, dispossessed, ungraspable death - that death is the focus of this thesis.

Syria as we knew it does not exist anymore. However, all conflicts change countries and their societies. Such an obvious statement needs to be unpacked in specific relation to Syria. What has happened, what does it mean, and what comes next? In order to consider the future of Syria, it is crucial to assess not only what has been destroyed, but also how it was destroyed. It is equally vital to address the structural and possibly enduring results of large-scale destruction and displacement. These dynamics are not only at play in Syrian society, but are tearing at the economic fabric and very territorial integrity of the country. If war is a powerful process of human and material destruction, it is equally a powerful process of spatial, social and economic reconfiguration. Nor does it stop at national borders--the unravelling of Syria, and of the idea of Syria, has affected and will continue to affect the entire Middle East. ''War-Torn'' explores these transformations and the processes that fuel them. It is an indispensable account throwing light on neglected aspects of the Syrian war, and a much-needed contribution to our understanding of conflicts in the twenty-first century.

Cybersecurity is a complex and contested issue in international politics. By focusing on the 'great powers'--the US, the EU, Russia and China--studies in the field often fail to capture the specific politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East, especially in Egypt and the GCC states. For these countries, cybersecurity policies and practices are entangled with those of long-standing allies in the US and Europe, and are built on reciprocal flows of data, capital, technology and expertise. At the same time, these states have authoritarian systems of governance more reminiscent of Russia or China, including approaches to digital technologies centred on sovereignty and surveillance. This book is a pioneering examination of the politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East. Drawing on new interviews and original fieldwork, James Shires shows how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organisations to encompass a variety of concepts, including state conflict, targeted spyware, domestic information controls, and foreign interference through leaks and disinformation. These shifting meanings shape key technological systems as well as the social relations underpinning digital development. But however the term is interpreted, it is clear that cybersecurity is an integral aspect of the region's contemporary politics.

When mass protests erupted in Algeria in 2019, on a scale unseen anywhere in the region since the Arab Spring, the outside world was taken by surprise. Algeria had been largely unaffected by the turmoil that engulfed its neighbours in 2011, and it was widely assumed that the population was too traumatised and cowed by the country's bloody civil war to take to the streets demanding change. Michael J. Willis offers an explanation of this unexpected development known as the Hirak Movement, examining the political and social changes that have occurred in Algeria since the 'dark decade' of the 1990s. He examines how the bitter civil conflict was brought to an end, and how a fresh political order was established following the 1999 election of a dynamic new leader, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Initially underwritten by revenue from Algeria's substantial hydrocarbons resources, this new order came to be undermined by falling oil prices, an ailing president, and a population determined to have its voice heard by an increasingly corrupt, out-of-touch and opaque national leadership. Exactly twenty years passed before Bouteflika's presidency was brought to an end by the Hirak protests--this book is an authoritative account of them.

When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated them? When Japanese maps and plans were captured on the battlefield, who deciphered them for Britain? When Great Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941, there was a linguistic battle to be fought--but Britain was hopelessly unprepared. Eavesdropping on the Emperor traces the men and women with a talent for languages who were put on crash courses in Japanese, and unfolds the history of their war. Some were sent with their new skills to India; others to Mauritius, where there was a secret radio intercept station; or to Australia, where they worked with Australian and American codebreakers. Translating the despatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin after his conversations with Hitler; retrieving filthy but valuable documents from the battlefield in Burma; monitoring Japanese airwaves to warn of air-raids--Britain depended on these forgotten 'war heroes'. The accuracy of their translations was a matter of life or death, and they rose to the challenge. Based on declassified archives and interviews with the few survivors, this fascinating, globe-trotting book tells their stories.

In 2013 Ousmane Diallo, a 26-year-old Senegalese olive harvester, lost his life when a gas canister exploded in a Sicilian field. As an African migrant, he was little mourned. But though they''ve been deliberately forgotten, neither the events of Ousmane''s life nor his tragic death are uncommon. Across Italy today, African workers toil in the fields that make it one of Europe''s largest exporters of fruit and vegetables. Having fled home countries devastated by colonialism and global capitalism, those who survive the journey across the Mediterranean arrive on European shores only to find themselves systematically segregated and exploited. They have been subject to anti-migrant policies over decades, from administrations across the political spectrum. Trapped in a chokehold of subhuman living and working conditions, they are the dehumanised Other, invisible by design--the people hidden behind foods and goods branded ''Made in Italy''. Ciao Ousmane is the story of this subordinated class. Through the lives and stories of Italy''s migrant workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai exposes the open secret of how state and society create ''necessary outcasts''. This is a bitter, frank and moving tale of racial capitalism, against which workers constantly find new ways to organise and fight back.

We are said to be living in an age of anger, and national populist movements are often identified as its political manifestation. In Populism Michael Burleigh explores this new global era, drawing on his Engelsberg Lectures. The first chapter explores the nature of mass anger, mainly in Europe and the US: how might popular discontent be artificially incited and sustained by elite figures claiming to speak for the common people? The second chapter compares the difficult aftermaths of empire in Britain and Russia. Has that experience fostered these countries'' sense of exceptionality and inability to evolve into normal societies? Many national populist movements exploit History, as we saw with the so-called ''statue wars'' reignited in 2020. The third chapter ranges across Europe, but also China, where a nationalised version of History has become intrinsic to social support for the ruling Communist Party. In the short term, COVID-19 has created problems for several populist leaders, whose image has suffered amidst the public''s new-found respect for expertise and unfavourable comparisons with less shouty politicians who have handled the pandemic differently. Yet, with the looming risk of an extended economic depression, Burleigh fears that new post-populists may arise in the long run.

Born in 1920, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman studied law. One of the founders of the Awami League in 1949, he later led his party to an absolute majority in the 1970 election, a key event in the emergence of Bangladesh. On 7 March 1971 he called for a non-cooperation movement, proclaiming: ''This struggle is the struggle for freedom; this struggle is the struggle for independence.'' Later that month he issued a declaration of independence and was arrested by the Pakistan Army. Following the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which occurred while he was still in jail in Pakistan, he became prime minister of Bangladesh in 1972 and president from 1975.On 15 August that year, he and his family were brutally assassinated at home by a group of renegade Bangladesh Army officers. Soldiers ransacked the whole house, butΓÇöthinking that Mujib''s notebooks were of no interestΓÇöleft them behind. These revealing diaries, which Mujib had entitled ''A plate, a bowl and a blanket are the only things one gets in prison'', were later found among the debris.

An original contribution to international ethics and humanitarian intervention, Westphalia From Below draws on history and IR theory to offer a fresh analysis of an insufficiently understood subject. This new history of the lead-up to 1648 exposes the mythical and problematic nature of the Peace of Westphalia and its implications for international politics, questioning the impoverished visions of this landmark treaty that influence IR theory and humanitarian protection to this day.IR is infused with perspectives from the humanities based on reconstructions of the mentalities of the Thirty Years'' War. Scholars tell us that the Westphalia settlement instituted an absolutist understanding of sovereignty as a right and a strict principle of non-intervention, which was only later displaced by the ''radical innovation'' of humanitarian interventionΓÇöbut Thomas Peak exposes this myth as a fabrication that cannot sustainably be upheld as a normative precept. He shows from the ground up that, in fact, Westphalia established an order grounded in human dignity, in which sovereignty and intervention were not opposed. This true legacy of Westphalia has important and valuable connections with recent conceptions of international politics, particularly the legitimacy of intervention on humanitarian grounds. Peak''s study is as relevant as it is refreshing.

What does the biggest geopolitical project of our time tell us about China's global ambitions?

A first-hand account of the bitterly fought wars for control over some of the world's highest borders.

A highly original mix of polemic and ethnographic scholarship, exploring how South Asia's culture of road-building reflects the world's dangerous obsession with progress and growth.

In 2019, Islamic State lost its last remaining sliver of territory in Syria, and its Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. These setbacks seemed to herald the Caliphate''s death knell, and many now forecast its imminent demise. Yet its affiliates endure, particularly in Africa: nearly all of Islamic State''s cells on the continent have reaffirmed their allegiance, attacks have continued in its name, many groups have been reinvigorated, and a new province has emerged. Why, in Africa, did the two major setbacks of 2019 have so little impact on support for Islamic State? The Islamic State in Africa suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the emergence and evolution of Islamic State''s provinces in Africa, which it calls ''sovereign subordinates''. By examining the rise and development of eight Islamic State ''cells'', the authors show how, having pledged allegiance to IS Central, cells evolved mostly autonomously, using the IS brand as a means for accrual of power, but, in practice, receiving relatively little if any direction or material support from central command. Given this pattern, IS Central''s relative decline has had little impact on its African affiliates--who are likely to remain committed to the Caliphate''s cause for the foreseeable future.

A slave woman in 1840s America dresses as a white, disabled man to escape to freedom, while a twenty-first-century black rights activist is ΓÇÿcancelledΓÇÖ for denying her whiteness. A Victorian explorer disguises himself as a Muslim in ArabiaΓÇÖs forbidden holy city. A trans man claiming to have been assigned male at birth is exposed and murdered by bigots in 1993. Today, Japanese untouchables leave home and change their name.All of them have ΓÇÿpassedΓÇÖ, performing or claiming an identity that society hasnΓÇÖt assigned or recognised as theirs. For as long as weΓÇÖve drawn lines describing ourselves and each other, people have naturally fallen or deliberately stepped between them. What do their storiesΓÇöin life and in artΓÇötell us about the changing meanings of identity? About our need for labels, despite their obvious limitations?Lipika Pelham reflects on tales of fluidity and transformation, including her own. From Pope Joan to Parasite, Brazil to Bangladesh, London to Liberia, Passing is a fascinating, timely history of the self.

Who pulls the strings in America?

In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the international community and tarnishing the reputation of Muhammad bin Salman, the kingdomΓÇÖs young, reformist crown prince. Domestically, bin Salman''s reforms have proven divisive, and his adoption of populist nationalism and fierce repression of diverse critical voicesΓÇöreligious scholars, feminists and dissident youthΓÇöhave failed to silence a vibrant and well-connected Saudi society.Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind the crown prince''s reforms. She dissects the Saudi regime''s propaganda and progressive new image, while also dismissing Orientalist views that despotism is the only pathway to stable governance in the Middle East. Charting old and new challenges to the fragile Saudi nation from the kingdom''s very inception, this blistering book exposes the dangerous contradictions at the heart of the Son King''s Saudi Arabia.

It''s in our instant noodles and chocolate bars, our lipsticks and fuel tanks. But what even is palm oil, and how has it come to dominate our lives so completely? Jocelyn C. Zuckerman travels across four continents and back two centuries to find answers about the most widely used vegetable oil on Earth. The little oil palm fruit has played an outsized role in world history and economic development. But the multi-billion-dollar palm oil business has been built on stolen land and slave labour; it spurred colonisation and swept away lives and cultures. Today, its fires and mass deforestation generate carbon emissions to rival those of entire industrialized nations, and they''ve pushed animals like the orangutan to the brink of extinction.Combining history, travelogue and investigative reporting, Planet Palm offers an unsettling, urgent look at a global industry that has become an environmental, public health, and human rights disaster.

The Noncooperation Movement of 1920-22, led by Mahatma Gandhi, challenged every aspect of British rule in India. It was supported by people from all levels of the social hierarchy and united Hindus and Muslims in a way never again achieved by Indian nationalists. It was remarkably nonviolent. In all, it was one of the major mass protests of modern times. Yet there are almost no accounts of the entire movement, although many aspects of it have been covered by local-level studies. This volume both brings together and builds on these studies, looking at fractious all-India debates over strategy; the major grievances that drove local-level campaigns; the ways leaders braided together these streams of protest within a nationalist agenda; and the distinctive features of popular nonviolence for a righteous cause. David Hardiman's previous volume, The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, examined the history of nonviolent resistance in the Indian nationalist movement. The present volume takes his study forward to examine the culmination of this first surge of struggle. While the campaign of 1920-22 did not achieve its desired objective of immediate self-rule, it did succeed in shaking to the core the authority of the British in India.

How has the poster child of "cradle to grave" welfare fared in recent decades, and what have the strains on Swedish society revealed about its true nature?

What does it feel like to move through a world designed to limit and exclude you? What are the joys and pains of holidays for people of colour, when guidebooks are never written with them in mind? How are black lives today impacted by the othering legacy of colonial cultures and policies? What can travel tell us about our sense of self, of home, of belonging and identity? Why has the world order become hostile to human mobility, as old as humanity itself, when more people are on the move than ever?Nanjala Nyabola is constantly exploring the world, working with migrants and confronting complex realities challenging common assumptions ΓÇô both hers and othersΓÇÖ. From Nepal to Botswana, Sicily to Haiti, New York to Nairobi, her sharp, humane essays ask tough questions and offer surprising, deeply shocking and sometimes funny answers. It is time we saw the world through her eyes.