Here are 100 books that In the Likely Event fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Likely Event.
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I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.
Busse offers the new perspective of an insider—an erstwhile gun executive. I’ve always held that the gun industry has gotten far too little attention historically, and that commercial forces substantially helped to create and then maintain the American gun mystique and culture long after the “frontier” closed. Busse’s work shows just how explicitly the gun industry today, since 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, relies on “manufactured fear” to push products. The book teems with examples of fear marketing, including endorsements from social media celebrities that created a new breed of “couch commandos,” steeped in the “glorification of violence, the utter rejection of political correctness, and the freewheeling masculinity and objectification of women.” And in Busse’s view it’s not just that gun marketing has changed, but that the gun industry has transformed American culture itself, radicalizing it and shifting it toward authoritarianism.
A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point.
As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist–all things that the firearms industry was built on–Ryan Busse chased a childhood dream and built a successful career selling millions of firearms for one of America’s most popular gun companies.
But blinded by the promise of massive profits, the gun industry abandoned its self-imposed decency in favor of hardline conservatism and McCarthyesque internal policing, sowing irreparable division in our politics and…
After losing her brothers, Titania studied and trained to rule Aubren. But she hadn’t planned on becoming Queen at fifteen. Now with her reign challenged from within the castle walls, she must decide what is best for her kingdom. Should another rule in her stead? Or has fate led her…
I am a historian of the Cold War and early post-Cold War period, focusing on Soviet/ Russian foreign policy in Afghanistan and in the Middle East in the 1970s and the 1980s. These are exciting topics on which an increasing number of new documents are released each year. I have a research project and lecture about these issues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. But academia is my second career. Before my Ph.D., I worked as an aid worker, including for two years in the Middle East. I was in the region during the height of the Syrian crisis, notably running humanitarian multi-sector needs assessments.
I liked Samuel Helfont’s book for the solidity of his research on the instrumentalization of Islam by the Saddam Hussein regime.
I personally feel that the 1980s is a key period in understanding how some of the problems that emerged during the late Cold War are still relevant today. This is certainly true for the Middle East, a region that is prone to conflicts and where the United States has been involved militarily over the past forty years.
Beyond that, I enjoyed Helfont’s writing which is strikingly dynamic.
Samuel Helfont draws on extensive research with Ba'thist archives to investigate the roots of the religious insurgencies that erupted in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003. In looking at Saddam Hussein's policies in the 1990s, many have interpreted his support for state-sponsored religion as evidence of a dramatic shift away from Arab nationalism toward political Islam. While Islam did play a greater role in the regime's symbols and Saddam's statements in the 1990s than it had in earlier decades, the regime's internal documents challenge this theory.
The "Faith Campaign" Saddam launched during this period was the culmination of a…
I grew up devouring old Classics Illustrated comics. By the time I was 12, I’d read all the great adventure stories from H. Rider Haggard to Jules Verne. My childhood obsession became my career. My research has taken me down the Silk Road, into the jungles of Mexico and the mountains of the high Atlas, and following opium caravans through the Golden Triangle. I’ve now written more than twenty novels of historical adventure that have been translated into 25 languages.
The story is set in Afghanistan, just after the end of World War 2, and takes the reader on a journey that would be virtually impossible for a westerner today. I love its authenticity—Michener travelled the country extensively in the sixties—and the combination of brutality and humour make this a unique adventure. There’s also a handful of characters who could have come straight out of Game of Thrones. It’s not one of Michener’s usual house brick size novels—this is less intimidating, more like a roofing tile. I’ve read it many times over the years. For me it remains his best work. A great story combined with a breathtaking insight into the culture, history, and geography of a forbidding and fascinating country.
First published in 1963, James A. Michener’s gripping chronicle of the social and political landscape of Afghanistan is more relevant now than ever.
Combining fact with riveting adventure and intrigue, Michener follows a military man tasked, in the years after World War II, with a dangerous assignment: finding and returning a young American woman living in Afghanistan to her distraught family after she suddenly and mysteriously disappears. A timeless tale of love and emotional drama set against the backdrop of one of the most important countries in the world today, Caravans captures the tension of the postwar period, the sweep…
My interest in politics and conflict has always come from the margins. I have developed an interest in the periphery, minorities, liberation movements, other actors outside the center, official governance institutions, and national political elites. My work has mainly concentrated on how such actors have sought to influence politics at the national and international level and how questions of identity, perceptions of self and other, and sense of belonging come into play. Geographically, my interest has lied primarily in the Middle East, broadly defined, particularly Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan. In recent years, however, I have also developed an interest in East Africa, especially Sudan and South Sudan.
Mukhopadhyay’s book joined an emerging cohort of books that sought to demonstrate that the collapse of the state does not necessarily lead to a vacuum. This is because any vacuum left by the decline of the state is bound to be filled by other forces, be they local or external to the region.
In the case of Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay shows through the case of Afghanistan, and based on a fieldwork in the country, how the state that was born out of the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 was capable of co-opting local warlords in the remote periphery and integrate them into the emerging order in the country.
Through a close examination and detailed accounts of several case studies from across Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay offers persuading arguments about what makes warlords and other peripheral actors useful allies to a weak central government.
Warlords have come to represent enemies of peace, security, and 'good governance' in the collective intellectual imagination. This book asserts that not all warlords are created equal. Under certain conditions, some become effective governors on behalf of the state. This provocative argument is based on extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, where Mukhopadhyay examined warlord-governors who have served as valuable exponents of the Karzai regime in its struggle to assert control over key segments of the countryside. She explores the complex ecosystems that came to constitute provincial political life after 2001 and exposes the rise of 'strongman' governance in two provinces. While…
I’ve been working to amplify voices of refugees and asylum seekers since 2015, when a 12-year-old boy named Mez joined my family as the first of four foster brothers I now have from Eritrea, Sudan, Libya and Afghanistan. Their stories led me to the Calais Jungle in an attempt to challenge the negative media portrayal of those experiencing displacement. I’ve since worked in refugee camps across the world from France to Bangladesh, sharing food, stories, laughter, and tears, asking questions and learning from those I meet. My book is a compilation of the stories that have impacted me most (Mez being the first), and a testament to those who shared them with me.
I read this book when my own family was in the process of welcoming a new foster brother from Afghanistan.
Reading Gulwali’s very personal journey from Afghanistan to the UK as an unaccompanied child helped us to understand what my own brother had been through and the journey he had taken. It gave us context as to the Afghanistan he experienced and left behind, and we passed the book around the whole family and devoured it eagerly.
Gulwali’s story is raw and real and is the most powerful account of a child refugee I have ever read.
A gripping, inspiring, and eye-opening memoir of fortitude and survival—of a twelve-year-old boy’s traumatic flight from Afghanistan to the West—that puts a face to one of the most shocking and devastating humanitarian crises of our time.
“To risk my life had to mean something. Otherwise what was it all for?”
In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali’s mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the twelve-year-old across eight countries, from the mountains…
To stop us from reopening a school for girls, a mob of angry and well-armed Pashtun men threatened to shoot my workers. I surprised myself. “If you are going to shoot my workmen, you will have to shoot me first!” My wife, Janna, and I bred cattle in outback Australia. On the weekends we played tennis. Yet, in 1984 we began a twenty-four-year adventure battling corruption, injustice, and disadvantage in the deserts, mountains, and cities of Pakistan and Afghanistan. I dug wells, built schools, and helped restore the eyesight of thousands of Afghans; until I myself became blind.
The three Pashtun virtues are hospitality, honor, and revenge. Pashtun hospitality epitomizes human warmth and generosity but Pashtun honor and revenge make a chilling and toxic cocktail. Christina Lamb gives a human face to the destruction wrought by the then unknown ultraconservative political and religious faction led by the one-eyed cleric, Mohammad Omar. Lamb was there before and after the tragedy. A great read. Will history repeat itself?
“Lamb’s long experience as a journalist is a solid stage upon which to build the story of her voyage through Afghanistan, told with a deep, loving honesty.” — Montreal Gazette (Canada)
A brilliant British war correspondent who has spent ten years in Afghanistan gives a first hand report on the war and its genesis.
Award-winning journalist Christina Lamb chronicles the human stories behind the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lamb spent the last phase of the Soviet War in Pakistan, relying on her friendship with exiled Afghans to smuggle her in and out of Jalalabad. Many of these friends…
Why: Earth 2278 is a passionate book about enduring human emotional limits. A futuristic thriller with compassion, gallows humor, a love story, high-stakes battles, and a tight bond of camaraderie. In this futuristic adventure, it blends a creative science of a new world-building, set upon a tyrannical leader who runs…
I’ve been fascinated by fictional royal stories ever since I was a little kid watching them unfold in children’s movies. Once I became a reader, I quickly became a fan of the genre. There’s such an escapism that comes with reading books about royals. And since America has no monarch, the books offer a fantasy and fairy-tale aspect to the reading. I read these books to relax, to fall in love with love, and to cheer for the ordinary person finding something extraordinary in their world—real orfictional.
I feel like Rachel Hauck is the queen of royal fiction in the Christian romance genre. She was the first author I read in the genre to have royals which made me a huge fan. There’s such elegance in her writing but also humor, a swoony hero, and a heroine to cheer for. Not to mention her covers are all awesome for her Royal Wedding series. I couldn’t make a royal recommendation list without her on it.
An American heiress and a crown prince thought their secret marriage was annulled years ago-but now they must come face to face with their past. The third volume in the captivating Royal Wedding series from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck.
Corina Del Rey is happy with her life in Melbourne, Florida. She spends her days engrossed in her career as a journalist and has her sights set on climbing the corporate ladder, partly to distract herself from her dissolving family.
Prince Stephen of Brighton Kingdom came to America to escape responsibility, but what he found complicates his life…
I hate saying goodbye. Picking up a book and being introduced to an entire group of people—family, friends, teammates—and knowing you get to continue to watch these relationships bloom over a course of books is part of the reason I pick up a book in the first place. I want to see these characters pop in twenty books down the road. I absolutely love cameos of old characters! Because of this, I write in a singular world as well. My Prescotts may be the base of the world at the moment, but it’s also their friends at O’Gallaghers and their teammates with the Enforcers hockey team that keep the world growing—and it’s not ending anytime soon.
Stoker is the queen of military/former-military “families.” You pick up a book and instantly fall in love with that team of men. Shielding Sierra is her latest (as of January 2022) and it happens to be at the end of a series. Stoker writes in a single universe, so while we know this team, we also see previous teams she’s written, and the family unit that they all build with one another really shines in Sierra, when one of their own purposely becomes a POW in order to save the heroine.
As a civilian contractor, Sierra Clarkson thought she’d found the perfect way to serve her country, short of joining the military…until she was kidnapped from a base in Afghanistan. Turns out terrorists don’t care if you’re a soldier or not; everyone bleeds the same. Even worse, no one knows she’s been taken. Her missing belongings point to desertion—which means no one is looking for her, either
But someone is.
Fred “Grover” Groves never forgot the redheaded spitfire working the chow line on a base in the Afghani desert. He’d felt an instant attraction to the petite woman, a connection deep…
I’m a historian whose love of the subject was first nourished by my mother. She treated historical events as a source of good stories, discussed historical figures as if talking about people we knew personally, and introduced me to historical fictions that immersed me in vanished worlds. I still read historical fiction, to which I’ve added mountains of history proper. The nonfiction histories I most love insist that the past matters, and they make visible how seemingly abstract events touched the lives of ordinary people.
Alexievich is equal parts therapist, poet, and historian. She elicits deeply personal memories through oral histories that she artfully weaves into a portrait of vast events. The accounts gathered in this history of the Soviet Union’s ten-year war against Afghanistan give voice to soldiers’ memories of the country they were asked to defeat, which defeated them instead, and parents’ memories of sons killed or otherwise destroyed in battle. I read this book after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which initiated an equally brutal, mindless, and losing war, and I find sad new relevance in this book as I learn of Russian soldiers being shipped home from Ukraine in the same kinds of zinc coffins that gives this book its title.
From 1979 to 1989 a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties-and the youth and humanity of many tens of thousands more. Creating controversy and outrage when it was first published in the USSR-it was called by reviewers there a "slanderous piece of fantasy" and part of a "hysterical chorus of malign attacks"-Zinky Boys presents the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its lasting effects. What emerges is a story that is shocking in its brutality and revelatory…
"Witches take on the patriarchy in this epic feminist fantasy." Spirit Sight book 1 volume 1 is an award-winning debut epic fantasy novel written by Ross Hightower, the first in the six-book Spirit Song series. Winner of numerous awards, including the Readers Favorite Fantasy Finalist and the Eric B Hoffer…
My illiterate grandparents taught me to love learning. A librarian who shared books and food with a ragged, hungry kid cemented my love of books. My fifth-grade teacher in a ghetto school took unpaid time to encourage my writing. My mother taught me to never give up my dreams. Dogs taught me the meaning of unconditional affection and loyalty. And nowadays, when I lose faith in myself, it is my wife’s love and belief in me that keeps me going. Love, in its many forms, has shaped my life.
Major Jane McMurty is a complex character trying to work through PTSD acquired under fire in Afghanistan while integrating back into civilian society. Her “sidekick” is a dog named Shady who epitomizes the independence and intelligence of a working dog. As a past breeder of working GSDs, the interactions between woman and dog are quite realistic, and quickly pull me into the story.
This is a woman used to standing on her own two feet, but now they aren’t there. The love she has for the K-9 who went through the war with her, Shadow, shines through her actions, and in the way that she fights to bring Shadow home. Even though this novel highlights several very real issues faced by returning veterans and amputees, this is far from a “sob story.”
I love the strength the main character shows and the way she treats her current dog, Shady. That…
Major Jane McMurtry is learning to walk after an IED ripped into her legs. Fitted with a new set of prosthetic legs, Jane can do more now. She can start tracking again with her new dog. She can go for long walks around her Colorado ranch. Even her back and hip pain have diminished. But that's not the sort of pain pressing down on Jane. She misses Shadow, the military K9 partner she trained and had to leave in Afghanistan. If he could come home. If she only had Shadow at her side, she'd handle things better. Unfortunately, it doesn't…
