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The Only Language They Understand
- Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace proposals, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions, and state-building efforts. The conventional story is that these well-meaning attempts at peacemaking were repeatedly, perhaps terminally, thwarted by violence. Through a rich interweaving of reportage, historical narrative, and powerful analysis, Nathan Thrall presents a startling counterhistory. He shows that force has impelled each side to make its largest concessions, from Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution to Israeli territorial withdrawals. This simple fact has been neglected by the world powers, which have expended countless resources on initiatives meant to diminish friction between the parties. By quashing any hint of confrontation and providing bounteous economic and military assistance, the United States and Europe have merely entrenched the conflict by lessening the incentives to end it. Thrall's important book upends the beliefs steering these failed policies, revealing how the aversion of pain, not the promise of peace, has driven compromise for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
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Excellent book
- By Luis on 11-04-10
By: Gideon Rose
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Reclaiming Israel’s History
- Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace
- By: David Brog
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a time when Israel could do no wrong in America's eyes. That time is long past, and justly so - no nation is absolutely perfect, particularly not one that is engaged in a conflict as long as the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the myth of the perfect Israel has been supplanted by a far more deleterious myth: the myth of the evil Israel. This new myth has so pervaded contemporary culture that the history of Israel - as well documented as it is - has been recast and retold to fit a false narrative of Israel as violent occupier.
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Excellent summary of Israeli point if view
- By Mendy on 08-12-18
By: David Brog
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Making the Future
- Occupations, Interventions, Empire and Resistance
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Making the Future presents more than 50 concise and persuasively argued commentaries on U.S. politics and policies, written between 2007 and 2011. Taken together, Chomsky's essays present a powerful counter-narrative to official accounts of the major political events of the past four years: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the U.S. presidential race; the ascendancy of China; Latin America's leftward turn; the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea; Israel's invasion of Gaza and more.
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Fifty-Two Reasons to Listen to Chomsky
- By Susie on 01-04-13
By: Noam Chomsky
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Interventions
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Interventions, by Noam Chomsky, is getting new press after the Pentagon banned the book from Guantanamo Bay's prison library. Interventions is Noam Chomsky at his best. Not since his all-time best-selling title, 9/11, published in the Open Media series in 2001, have readers and listeners had a timely, short, affordable Chomsky. Unlike 9/11, Interventions is a writerly work - a series of more than 30 tightly argued essays aimed at various aspects of U.S. power and politics in the post-9/11 world. While critical of U.S. military interventions around the globe, each piece in the book is in itself an intellectual intervention.
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Chomsky on Fire
- By Susie on 01-09-13
By: Noam Chomsky
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The Cold War
- A World History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today.
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A lenghy treatise on the Cold War
- By Donald Hill on 11-21-17
By: Odd Arne Westad
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Pakistan on the Brink
- The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
- By: Ahmed Rashid
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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What are the possibilities—and hazards—facing America as it withdraws from Afghanistan and reviews its long engagement in Pakistan? Where is the Taliban now in both of these countries? What does the immediate future hold, and what are America’s choices going forward? These are some of the crucial questions that Ahmed Rashid—Pakistan’s preeminent journalist—takes on in this follow-up to his acclaimed Descent into Chaos.
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A Very Long NPR-like Interview and History Lesson
- By Harry Zimmer on 04-23-12
By: Ahmed Rashid
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The Cold War
- A New History
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jay Gregory, Alan Sklar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.
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WOW
- By Cordell eddings on 10-13-07
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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The Arabs
- A History
- By: Eugene Rogan
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 27 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In this definitive history of the modern Arab world, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on Arab sources and texts to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context for the first time. Tracing five centuries of Arab history, Rogan reveals that there was an age when the Arabs set the rules for the rest of the world. Today, however, the Arab world's sense of subjection to external powers carries vast consequences for both the region and Westerners who attempt to control it.
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Superb Book About the Arab World
- By Nostromo on 05-29-16
By: Eugene Rogan
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Enemies and Neighbors
- Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
- By: Ian Black
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Enemies and Neighbors, Ian Black, who has spent over three decades covering events in the Middle East and is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, offers a major new history of the Arab-Zionist conflict from 1917 to today. Laying the historical groundwork in the final decades of the Ottoman Era, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources - from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting - to recreate the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides.
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Decent historical compilation, poor framing
- By Dan Harris on 07-08-20
By: Ian Black
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Hanoi’s War
- An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam
- By: Lien-Hang T. Nguyen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of US involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the listener from the marshy Mekong Delta swamps to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow.
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Understanding politics in SE Asia.
- By Mark U. on 04-26-15
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Cursed Victory
- Israel and the Occupied Territories; A History
- By: Ahron Bregman
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade. The audiobook provides a gripping and unvarnished chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an "enlightened occupation" quickly turned sour and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end.
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Largely just the diplomatic history
- By Norman B. Bernstein on 09-28-15
By: Ahron Bregman
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A Failed Empire
- The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
- By: Vladimir Zubok
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Western interpretations of the Cold War--both realist and neoconservative--have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness, argues Vladislav Zubok. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the 20th century.
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Focus on the Top Leadership
- By Augustus T. White on 08-13-10
By: Vladimir Zubok
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What listeners say about The Only Language They Understand
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Global Doc_Amazon
- 01-04-24
Amazing reportage
One of the best and most concise descriptions of these Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, that it’s various episodes 
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- Ariel
- 06-20-21
Thrall is the best writer on Israel-Palestine
An extraordinarily deep, well-informed diagnosis of the tragic political mess in Israel-Palestine. Thrall's an impeccable scholar, but he also feels the suffering the conflict is causing. This book doesn't cover everything, but it's the best source for everything it does.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Corina
- 05-30-17
Fresh take on the Isr.-Pal. impasse
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Recommend because a fresh look at why the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been at an impasse for so long.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
The most compelling aspect of the book is its iconoclastic approach: quite the opposite of what we have been accustomed to hearing for the past 30 or so yearsת and its cogent argument to pressure both sides (and particularly the stronger one) to reach a compromise.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It certainly made me rethink my own assumptions.
Any additional comments?
The narrator massacres Hebrew and Arabic names, including those of prime ministers. Worse of all, he consistently pronounces the al-Aqsa (pronounced al-Ak' sah) Mosque (the prime Muslim holy place in Jerusalem) as the al-As' ka (hear: Alaska) Mosque, which is an insult to Muslims. One would think it would be possible for narrators to consult on the pronunciation of names and place names in advance and to get them right.
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6 people found this helpful