The Essential Rumi
Jalal Al-Din Rumi

(Translation by Coleman Barks)

Exquisite renderings of the 13th-century Persian mystic's words into American free verse... No translator could do greater justice to the gorgeous simplicity of Rumi's poetry than Coleman Barks has done here.

Palace Walk
Naguib Mahfouz

Volume I of the masterful Cairo Trilogy. A national best-seller in both hardcover and paperback, it introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.

The Beloved: Reflection on the Path of the Heart
Kahlil Gibran

For Kahlil Gibran, love was a way -perhaps the supreme way - of achieving self-realization and completeness as a human being. "The Beloved" is about transforming one's own life through love's all-consuming power.

The Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World
Wendy Buonaventura

Focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, [Wendy Buonaventura] shows how Arabic dance came to be influenced by Western ideas about art and entertainment. She also explores how the western world was also influenced by Arabic dance.

The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
Bernard Lewis

An authoritative, accessibly written overview of the history of the Middle East illuminates the region's traditions of government, economic systems, customs, and culture, as well as the religion of Islam and its legal system.