Syria Memoir

An astonishing but true account of a pianist’s escape from war-torn Syria to Germany offers a deeply personal perspective on the most devastating refugee crisis of this century.

What would you do if your son suddenly disappeared in Syria, and you had no idea what had happened to him? Would you contact the FBI? The State Department? Pray? Would you Google “What to do if your son disappears in Syria”? When the unthinkable happened, the answer, in the case of Ann Goodwin and her husband Tag, was: all of the above. Their 30-year-old son Sam, who was attempting to become one of the few people in history to travel to every single country on the planet, vanished in a supposed safe-zone run by the Kurds on the Turkish border.

Armored cars, burner phones, top-notch weaponry, and top-secret missions - this is the life of today's private military contractor. Like author Simon Chase, many PMCs were once the world's top military operatives, and since retiring from outfits like US Navy SEAL TEAM Six and the UK's Special Boat Service, they have devoted their lives to executing missions too sensitive for the government to acknowledge. Chase reveals here for the first time the operations too hazardous and politically volatile to be officially sanctioned by his employers.

Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French-American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For 81 days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors.

The extraordinary story of the Hadhad family and the founding of the chocolatier, Peace by Chocolate. Peace by Chocolate is the inspiring story of one family’s journey from the devastation of the Syrian Civil War and their welcome in a small town in Atlantic Canada.

قد تكون معلومة نادرة وخبراً يثير الدهشة عندما نعرف أن الروائية الإنكليزية الشهيرة أغاثا كريستي قد عاشت مطولاً في سورية والعراق...فقد تركت كريستي إرثاً غنياً من الروايات و المسرحيات البوليسية الأكثر انتشاراً في الأدب العالمي الحديث، و كانت حياتها عاصفة لا تهدأ، فمع شغفها المتواصل بالكتابة اليومية كانت تطوف حول العالم لذا نراها ترصد في كتابها هذا وقائع الحياة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية في سوريا، في المرحلة الأولى من نشوء الدولة السورية التي كانت تتشكل في ظل الانتداب الفرنسي خلال أعوام 1934/‏ 1935.

Prize-winning journalist and the coauthor of smash New York Times best seller I Am Malala, Christina Lamb now tells the inspiring true story of another remarkable young hero: Nujeen Mustafa, a teenager born with cerebral palsy whose harrowing journey from war-ravaged Syria to Germany in a wheelchair is a breathtaking tale of fortitude, grit, and hope that lends a face to the greatest humanitarian issue of our time: the Syrian refugee crisis.

Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea on September 2, 2015, and overnight, the political became personal, as the world awoke to the reality of the Syrian refugee crisis. Tima Kurdi first saw the shocking photo of her nephew in her home in Vancouver, Canada. But Tima did not need a photo to understand the truth - she and her family had already been living it.

Jamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of the al-Assads, he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of 12 years. In each instance, he was held without formal charge and without judicial process. My Road from Damascus not only tells the story of Saeed’s severe years in Syria’s most notorious military prisons but also his life during the country’s dramatic changes.

The events of the Arab Spring have come to be overshadowed by the civil war in the Arabic-speaking nation of Syria, which has been ruled throughout the 21st century by Bashar al-Assad. Though he had not planned on ruling Syria, several events conspired to make Bashar the successor of his father, Hafez. Though the West frequently looked for signs that Bashar might be a reformer, due in part to his formerly popular Western wife, Assad remained part of a critical alliance with Iran and the sub-state groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Anonymous hackers recently broke into the official accounts of President Bashar al-Assad, retrieving hundreds of emails and dumping them for all the world to see - and revealing that the ruthless dictator didn't have the ironclad online protection you might've expected.