Here are 100 books that In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs.
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My career has taken me zero millimeters from a large college, Christ Church, to a small, adjacent one, Corpus Christi, in 1971. In my mind, though, I have crisscrossed the world, leaping back in time to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and nowhere proved more fascinating than Iran, which I have visited twice, in 1998 and 2002. I have written about different facets of its history at the end of antiquity, in particular its dominant role in the India trade and the coming of the Arabs.
In my view, Josef provides the best introduction to the history of Persia in classical antiquity–something well worth knowing, given the importance of Iran now and the influence of the past on the present.
Iranians look back with pride to those centuries when three Persian empires dominated the Middle East and western Asia. The book is clear, readable, and not too long.
I like it because he attends first and foremost to the evidence, what he calls ‘testimonies,’ and because he focuses on fundamental factors rather than simply telling a story.
Of all the great civilizations of the ancient world, that of Persia is one of the most remarkable but least understood. This is a study of the country's origins and why it collapsed so dramatically with the Arab invasions of the seventh century. Josef Wiesehofer, provides a comprehensive survey of the Persian Empire under the Achaeminids, the Parthians and the Sassanians. By focusing on the primary Persian sources - written, archaeological and numismatic evidence from Persia - he avoids the traditional Western approach which has tended to rely so heavily on inaccurate, and sometimes prejudiced, Greek and Roman sources.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
My career has taken me zero millimeters from a large college, Christ Church, to a small, adjacent one, Corpus Christi, in 1971. In my mind, though, I have crisscrossed the world, leaping back in time to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and nowhere proved more fascinating than Iran, which I have visited twice, in 1998 and 2002. I have written about different facets of its history at the end of antiquity, in particular its dominant role in the India trade and the coming of the Arabs.
I have been to Iran twice for long journeys to historic sites. Like so many other travelers, I was captivated by the landscape of high mountains and parched plains and by the extraordinary buildings erected in the deep past.
Canepa’s book enabled me to travel again (in my mind) to the great palaces and sacred sites where each of the classical dynasties made its mark. Once again, I was struck by the absence of temples (before late antiquity) and by that hallmark of Iranian architecture, the ayvan, a great vaulted chamber open on one side from which a shah could gaze upon his people.
The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in Persia and the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies. Investigating over a thousand years of history, from the Achaemenid period to the arrival of Islam, The Iranian Expanse argues that Iranian identities were built and shaped not by royal discourse alone, but by strategic changes to Western Asia's cities, sanctuaries, palaces, and landscapes. The Iranian Expanse critically examines the construction of a new Iranian royal identity and empire, which subsumed and subordinated all previous traditions, including those of…
My career has taken me zero millimeters from a large college, Christ Church, to a small, adjacent one, Corpus Christi, in 1971. In my mind, though, I have crisscrossed the world, leaping back in time to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and nowhere proved more fascinating than Iran, which I have visited twice, in 1998 and 2002. I have written about different facets of its history at the end of antiquity, in particular its dominant role in the India trade and the coming of the Arabs.
Great writers of the past are revered in Iran, none more so than Hafiz. One of the most magical places in the country is the garden around his alabaster tomb in Shiraz. Dominic Brookshank whisks one far from the Western present into an extraordinary world of high culture in Shiraz in the fourteenth century.
He has helped me understand Hafiz’s ghazals, short lyric poems full of cryptic allusions. I am still dumbfounded at what they reveal of small elite gatherings of the court, at which wine is drunk (and praised), and Hafiz casts rapt, homoerotic gazes at young males. What an extraordinary disjunction with ordinary life in the Islamic world!
Despite his towering presence in premodern Persian letters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) remains an elusive and opaque character for many. In order to look behind the hyperbole that surrounds Hafiz's poetry and penetrate the quasi-hagiographical film that obscures the poet himself, this book attempts a contextualisation of Hafiz that is at once socio-political, historical, and literary. Here, Hafiz's ghazals (short, monorhyme, broadly amorous lyric poems) are read comparatively against similar texts composed by his less-studied rivals in the hyper competitive, imitative, and profoundly intertextual environment of fourteenth-century Shiraz. By bringing Hafiz's lyric poetry into productive, detailed…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
My career has taken me zero millimeters from a large college, Christ Church, to a small, adjacent one, Corpus Christi, in 1971. In my mind, though, I have crisscrossed the world, leaping back in time to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and nowhere proved more fascinating than Iran, which I have visited twice, in 1998 and 2002. I have written about different facets of its history at the end of antiquity, in particular its dominant role in the India trade and the coming of the Arabs.
I well remember following the sequence of events–a terrible fire that killed 430 trapped in a cinema in Abadan, riots, mass shootings by the army, strikes, politicization, and Islamicization of students–which culminated in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Like many others I was both excited and filled with foreboding at the time. To read Desmond Harney’s eyewitness account is to be carried right into the middle of things. I was utterly gripped as the Iranian middle classes grasped at forlorn hopes and as those hopes faded away in the face of the ‘single-mindedness, implacability, fierce puritanism and commanding authority’ of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The author, a former British diplomat, was living in Tehran during the build-up to the Iranian Revolution and kept a day-to-day account of the events he witnessed, as the priest and the king - the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Shah - squared up to each other. The author's faithfully recorded responses - of hope, fear, confusion, scepticism and ultimately despair - reflect with substantial accuracy the spirit in Iran as the country swung from being a docile, Western-orientated ally to an unpredictable, brooding, revolutionary state. Harney had access to all elements of Iran's political elite, including the Shah, and was…
Aryanne Oade works as a chartered psychologist, executive coach, and author of eight books. She has over thirty years’ experience in guiding clients through the challenge of complex workplace dynamics, and specialises in enabling detoxification and recovery from workplace bullying. Author of the best-selling award-winner Free Yourself from Workplace Bullying: Become Bully-Proof and Regain Control of Your Life, Aryanne’s work and books have been featured in The Independent, Sunday Independent (Ireland), Psychologies, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, The Belfast Telegraph, HR Magazine, Safety & Health Practitioner, SHP Online, Nursing Times, and Midwives.
I include this refreshing travel memoir for escapism – something to be savoured as well as to stretch the mind. Written by an open-minded British author, it describes her solo trip around the Islamic Republic on a motorcycle. By turns entertaining, amusing and full of love for a country and people of which she had no knowledge beyond Western propaganda, it is brilliantly written. Pryce challenges her own assumptions, widens her perspective and has a blast in an engrossing, compelling, easy-to-read travelogue.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD ADVENTURE TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR
'A warm, funny account of a road trip in contemporary Iran. It's had my whole family howling with laughter and shedding a few tears' - Shappi Khorsandi, Guardian
'A proper travelogue - a joyful, moving and stereotype-busting tale' - National Geographic Traveller Books of the Year
In 2011, at the height of tension between the British and Iranian governments, travel writer Lois Pryce found a note left on her motorcycle outside the Iranian Embassy in London:
... I wish that you will visit Iran so you will see for…
After writing and editing fifty books and being the recipient of a dozen national and international literary awards, it’s obvious that I’m not so much a travel writer as a writer who travels a lot and is sometimes compelled to share what he discovers, or fails to discover, along the way. I’m not one of those “lonely tourists with their empty eyes / Longing to be filled with monuments,” that poet P.K. Page describes. I constantly ask myself: “What compels you to abandon the safety and comforts of home for the three Ds of travel: Danger, Discomfort, and Disease?” Itchy feet, insatiable curiosity, or the desire to step outside the ego and the routines of daily life? All of the above. I avoid the Cook’s Tour, travel light, and live on the cheap.
I admire the way this brilliant Polish journalist has been able to get inside the head of an ancient traveller and show us not only the incredible insights of this peripatetic predecessor, but also what travel really means. “A journey neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our doorstep again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill.” Even more important, he offers one great truth about all writing, but especially history, that there is no truth with a capital T. “The subjective factor, its deforming presence will remain impossible to strain out . . . however evolved our methods, we are never in the presence of unmediated history, but history recounted, history as it appeared to someone, as he or she believes…
Travels with Herodotus records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays - to India, China and Africa - with the great Greek historian constantly in his pocket. He sees Louis Armstrong in Khartoum, visits Dar-es-Salaam, arrives in Algiers in time for a coup when nothing seems to happen (but he sees the Mediterranean for the first time). At every encounter with a new culture, Kapuscinski plunges in, curious and observant, thirsting to understand its history, its thought, its people. And he reads Herodotus so much that he often feels he is embarking on two journeys - the first his…
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
In my view, there is no bigger quest than to understand how to live a long and fulfilled life. Most of my professional life has focused on running neuroscience experiments in my academic laboratory and developing technologies for companies I have started to understand and increase happiness. I have devoted 20 years to this quest and I continue to work to build a happier and healthier world. I am one of the most cited scientists in this area and also regularly communicate to the general public through TED talks, books, magazine articles, and public lectures.
The USA is unique in that our Declaration of Independence identifies the happiness of citizens as a goal when organizing the country. The Geography of Bliss asks why all countries are not similarly organized. This book is a fun romp as the author visits different countries that have radically different happiness levels and seeks to find out why. A key finding from the book is that a rich cultural life increases happiness. This is consistent with my research that has shown its connections to, and experiences with, other people that account for most differences in happiness. This book made me think about what communities can do to foster social connections that drive up happiness levels.
What makes a nation happy? Is one country's sense of happiness the same as another's? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between...
After years of going to the world's least happy countries, Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent, decided to travel and evaluate each country's different sense of happiness and discover the nation that seemed happiest of all.
*He discovers the relationship between money and happiness in tiny and extremely wealthy Qatar (and it's not a good…
I was born and raised in Northern California, right on the banks of the Sacramento River. While I didn’t realize it growing up, it was an epicenter for outdoor adventures. Along with skiing, snowboarding, hiking, wakeboarding, and camping, I always read a lot. My dad was worried that I would have no sense of direction because I was always in the back of our van or RV reading a book. That led to writing…and I had my first article published in a wakeboarding magazine when I was 15 years old. Traveling always took a backburner to reading, but now it’s front and center of my writing.
This is classic literature in the realm of American travel.
I had no idea that “blue highways” existed, and even though Heat-Moon went cross-country back in the 1970s in his van equipped with his igloo cooler and makeshift bed (not like the $100k fancy campers you find today), the type of people you meet and experiences you have in this amazing country are still relevant today.
In Blue Highways Revisited, I was shocked to read how long it took for this book to get published and the stacks of printed-out drafts he had of it (I think it was like four feet high). If there are any travel writing classes taught as part of a creative writing program, then Blue Highways better be on the list.
Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation…
I’m a stubborn ox who won’t ever accept that something can’t be done. Tell me I can’t be a Formula 1 reporter for a particular magazine on the other side of the world, and I’ll embark on a journalism degree. Tell me I can’t be a professional golfer, and I’ll quit my job to get practicing. Tell me I can’t camp here, and up goes my hammock. Tell me to grow up and stop fantasising about driving road trains in Australia, and you’re basically insisting I get a truck licence. I like that being this way creates unique stories and that I have a little talent for writing them down.
I don’t really get why Joe Bennett isn’t more famous as a travel writer. The Briton passes through the world with a detached cynicism that results in sheer hilarity. If that’s not enough, this book has a thread: the challenge of hitch-hiking around New Zealand, his adopted homeland. A country that had a cameo part to play in my own Outback truck driver mission. A country with which I have a love-hate relationship. (I love its beauty and old-world charm; I hate it because I’m South African and its rugby team is too keen on beating mine.) Like me, Bennett’s first impressions of the Antipodes came from dead-of-night sports broadcasts. Like me, Bennett wrote about how (in)accurate those were in his book. I think we’d get on…
After ten years in New Zealand, Joe Bennett asked himself what on earth he was doing there. Other than his dogs, what was it about these two small islands on the edge of the world that had kept him - an otherwise restless traveller - for really much longer than they seemed to deserve? Bennett thought he'd better pack his bag and find out. Hitching around both the intriguingly named North and South Islands, with an eye for oddity and a taste for conversation, Bennett began to remind himself of the reasons New Zealand is quietly seducing the rest of…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
I have been passionate about traveling since I was a little girl and have always hit the road at every opportunity, especially now that I am retired. I’ve visited over 30 countries and have many more on my list. Reading a good book like Nothing to Declare, in which I get to know the author and that delves into a country’s culture, people and food, often lands me on a trip to the place. I’ve written two travel memoirs myself and a novel that takes place in France, and as I always say, “Travel is my muse.”
What sets this book apart is its writing style and is pretty much what you'd expect from Bourdain: direct, honest, and irreverent.
He doesn't sugarcoat his opinions, and his sense of humor keeps things fun along the way. And of course, there's food. Lots of it and his passion for it. He’s always on the hunt for the best local bites, and whether he’s slurping noodles from a street cart in Southeast Asia or savoring a long, indulgent meal in Paris, his enthusiasm is contagious. He’s clearly a foodie, as am I, and great food is always the best part of a travel story.
The book is organized by region, which I really liked, with each section packed with stories, tips, and recommendations to inspire your next adventure.
'Terrific ... His love for his subjects - both the food and the cook - sings' Telegraph 'Christ, could Bourdain weave words ... the guy wrote like a poet' Guardian A celebration of the life and legacy of one of the most important food writers of all time - the inimitable Anthony Bourdain Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to the stunning desert solitude of Oman's Empty Quarter - and many places beyond.…
