Andrew Ball returns in this dramatic story of the search for British children missing for more than forty years. While Ball struggles to make sense of new evidence that they were taken to the Soviet Union, Anton Adamovich is ruthlessly dealing with skeletons in the closet as he vies to become Russias next president. In New York, psychologist Miles Wallace disappears after boasting about the experimental work hed done for the Politburo when he was a young professor in Minsk. Chief Prosecutor Evgeny Shubin is proud of the work hes done to bring law and order to the Odessa region of Ukraine. But when Adamovich choses someone else to be prime minister of the newly formed independent republic, he wants revenge on his old university friend.
Award-winning Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey offers an interesting look at the Arab world as seen through the eyes of some the western expatriates--lost colonels and aging explorers, oilmen, sea captains, even retired spies--lingering in the Middle East.
One of the last remote corners of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman has only recently permitted tourism, fearing it would engulf the local culture before it was ready. Today a growing number of visitors are discovering a land of awe-inspiring natural landscapes: mountains, ravines, cliffs, canyons, desert and coastline sweltering under the Middle Eastern sun. In this fully revised and updated Bradt guide, author Diana Darke describes in detail the archaeological wonders, nature reserves and world-class diving sites of this spellbinding sultanate. Visitors can soak up the spicy, perfumed souk atmosphere, watch a camel race or camp out with the Bedouin under the stars. Brimming with up-to-date information on restaurants and bars, hotels, sports facilities and trip itineraries, Bradt's Oman has everything for the traveller who wants to explore the land beyond the myth.
Oman is one of the most beautiful and popular countries in the Middle East, yet a few years ago it was one of the world’s backwaters where visitors were discouraged. The turning point came with the takeover of power by Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970. This book, first published in 1979, takes the reader around the country, from the rugged Musandam peninsula in the north to the southern province of Dhofar. It builds a bridge between historical and modern Oman, describes the people and their landscapes, and the country’s indigenous arts and crafts.
In the heart of the desert is the biography of exploration geologist Mike Morton, written by his son who grew up with his father's stories and first came to experience the desert on their field trips together. Making use of Mike's journals and letters and writings of his contemporaries, the author describes his father's jouneys and what it was like for westerners to live in the Middle East in the post-World War II years. The book is also a history of oil exploration in the Middle East, relying onthe author's extensive research into company archives and eye-witness accounts of activities in the field. -- Provided by publisher.
Bradt's is the most up-to-date and informative guide to Oman, the Arabian peninsula's most welcoming destination, fully revised and updated by an author who has been living in Oman and Arabia since 1986. Oman is finally reaping the economic benefit of its location between Europe, Africa and Asia with substantial investment in major shipping ports and significant expansion of the national airline with new routes to Western Europe and East Asia. Despite being at the crossroads of great trade routes and empires, Oman has remained an independent country through much of its long history, and today tourism and travel are a major focus for Oman's government. This new edition covers the recent substantial investment in new airport facilities and upmarket accommodation and also features the historic UNESCO towns of Samharam and Al Balid. If you want to live like a local, the guide also tells you how to slow cook the traditional spiced meat shuwa and how to be a perfect guest if invited into an Omani home. Oman is not merely a desert. While it has the classic sand seas - Wihibah Sands - home to the nomadic Bedouin and their camels, this sultanate also boasts lush monsoon-soaked valleys near Salalah, mountain villages surrounded by green terraced fields of fruit trees and rose bushes, and the reef-fringed Ad Dimaniyyat Islands. With such a varied wilderness there is huge scope for adventure. Oman is increasingly perceived as a high-end cultural destination. The new Opera House has opened, directly supported by the Sultan, with top-notch international performers like Placido Domingo. The guide includes advice on property buying, since Omani law changed to allow expatriates to buy, explaining the rules and regulations. There is also a detailed overview of language schools teaching Arabic, not found in other guides. With advice on cultural etiquette, basic Arabic phrases and political history - as well as full practical information on where to stay and eat, and what to see and do - this fully updated edition remains the essential guide for travellers looking to discover the real Oman.
This book chronicles the florescence of architecture in the Arabian Gulf after the expulsion of the Portuguese in the early 1600's. It demonstrates how the power vacuum created by the collapse of Portuguese control over the trade routes in the Indian Ocean encouraged a growth in fortified architecture, especially in Oman, that radiated out to the surrounding region and was then slowly replaced by new patterns in domestic and public architecture and town planning throughout the Gulf as the trade lines were secured and the individual countries took the first steps towards the formation of today's modern nation-states.The book documents the buildings and crafts of this era and analyses them within the framework of the political, economic, and social information available through primary sources from the period in a way that is both intelligent and accessible. It considers the settlements as part of a larger-connected network of cities, towns and villages and focuses both on how the buildings provided innovative solutions to the demanding climate and yet incorporated new decorative and functional ideas. Topics are extensively and richly illustrated with colored photographs of the buildings as they are now, black and white and color historic photographs from archival and museum collections, line drawings, and computer-generated reconstructions.The book is therefore attractive to a number of audiences, including those who live in or travel to the Gulf as well as people with an interest in Arab and Islamic design, culture and society, vernacular architecture, and post-colonial approaches to colonial history.
This book describes in detail numerous geological sites throughout the mountains of Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Eastern Arabia. The region is well known for its oil and gas reserves in the desert interior, and Permian-Mesozoic shelf carbonates exposed in the mountains of the Musandam peninsula, Jebel al-Akhdar and Saih Hatat, where deep wadi canyons provide impressive three-dimensional views into the crust. The region has numerous globally important geological sites, including the world’s largest and best-exposed ophiolite complex, the Semail Ophiolite, which is a vast thrust sheet of Cretaceous ocean crust and upper mantle emplaced onto the Arabian continental margin. Other sites include spectacular fossil localities, subduction zone metamorphic rocks (eclogites, blueschists, amphibolites), fold-thrust belts, giant sheath folds and Precambrian salt domes, as well as the huge sand dunes of the Rub al’Khali, the Empty Quarter, and the separate Wahiba (Sharkiyah) sandsea of Eastern Oman. Written by Mike Searle, who has worked on geological research projects throughout Oman and UAE almost every year since 1978, this book describes the field geology of each site and includes a wealth of maps, field photos and diagrams illustrating key features. It also discusses the history of exploration of Arabia and the search for its hidden geological secrets. The book provides the geological basis for the establishment of a series of World Heritage Sites, National GeoParks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) throughout the region. As such, it is of interest to geologists, tourists, mountaineers, trekkers, rock climbers and naturalists.
This volume addresses the historical structures and current dynamics of Oman’s regionalization processes and their political, economic and social dimensions. It is based on an interdisciplinary and trans-regional dialogue between scholars from different social sciences and area studies such as political science, economics, management, economic and social geography, history, social anthropology and linguistics as well as Middle East/West Asian, gulf and African studies, and develops four major axes of research: - Oman’s integration into global and regional flows of goods, capital, people and ideas; - The multi-scaled political negotiation of such integration (or disintegration) processes; - Consequences of suchlike processes and forms of regionalization for (translocal) actors; - Ideas and strategic communication of regional belonging and the constitution of regions. Each chapter deals with one or more of these issues. Part I deals with concepts of regionalisation and region-building and presents different approaches that accentuate certain dimensions of these processes and come from different disciplinary backgrounds. Part II focuses on the translocal, transnational and (trans)regional movement of people, their practices and imaginations, be they contemporary labour in- and out-migrants, returnees from Eastern Africa or nomadic tribal members. Part III takes a closer look particularly at economic issues and regionalisation processes that are mainly based on multiple trade links, regional development policies or politics of regionalism. Part IV analyses political and socio-cultural issues in regional and global perspectives.
