Woman. Life. Freedom. A Fight for Fundamental Human Rights in Iran: Resources

Set in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra's Paradise is the fictional graphic novel of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone. What's keeping his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of his mother, who refuses to surrender her son to fate, and the tenacity of his brother, a blogger, who fuses tradition and technology to explore and explode the void in which Mehdi has vanished.

Barely a year after the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in Tunisia, a vast wave of popular protest has convulsed the Middle East, overthrowing long-ruling dictators and transforming the region's politics almost beyond recognition. But the biggest transformations of what has been labeled as the "Arab Spring" are yet to come.

Including a new preface that discusses the Iranian mood during and after the June 2009 presidential election and subsequent protests, this is an intimate look at a paradoxical country from a uniquely qualified journalist.

Now available in paperback, a riveting discussion about the continual struggles of the Middle East to reach freedom and democracy. After the 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that the U.S. was engaged in a war with terrorists and never realized it, they reasoned that, in effect, Americans were simply unable to fathom that there were people who hated and opposed our democracy with such ferocity. But after billions of dollars and almost a decade fighting a war in the Middle East, will we miss the threat again?

Gender and Violence in the Middle East argues that violence is fundamental to the functioning of the patriarchal gender structure that governs daily life in Middle Eastern societies. Ghanim contends that the inherent violence of gender relations in the Middle East feeds the authoritarianism and political violence that plague public life in the region.

Renowned blogger and Middle East expert Juan Cole takes us "inside the youth movements in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, showing us how activists used technology and social media to amplify their message and connect with like-minded citizens" (The New York Times) in this "rousing study of the Arab Spring" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).