This comparative study provides an overview of the textbook production chain, starting with its origins in the curriculum, and suggests ways in which policymakers can make improvements at every point in the chain. With evidence from a range of countries, mainly in Asia, the study is intended as a resource for policymakers and as a reference and benchmark for education systems. Although the study focuses on textbooks, which are the priority for governments and teachers and represent the gre...

This volume provides an overview of the themes and challenges in curriculum thinking and practice that currently engage policymakers and practitioners across the East Asian and Southeast Asian region. It addresses issues of policy development and implementation, and considers the notion of transversal in a broader sense, including whether the implementation of non-academic concepts can indeed traverse disciplinary, cultural and contextual boundaries.Consisting mainly of contribution...

Pen & Pulse: Essays on Writing, Craft, and the Writer's Journey is a compelling collection that delves into the heart of the writing life. Edited by Summer Stewart, this anthology gathers the voices of seasoned writers like Jennifer Clark, John Biscello, Kelli Allen, and others, each contributing essays that are thoughtful, honest, and meticulously crafted. From the intricacies of storytelling to the personal challenges and triumphs that shape the writing process,...

“I have returned to settle my account. . . .”Told through the voices of a group of close friends and spanning a generation, The Smiles of the Saints is an epic story condensed into a short, intricate novel. Twenty-year-old Haneen has just returned to Egypt after an absence of fifteen years spent mostly in a Parisian boarding school, cut off from all family save for sporadic visits from her father, Rami. She has been summoned back by her father’s twin sister, who gives her an envelo...

THE MORE YOU HATE ME is a memoir-in-essays collection that examines the author's experience with his father's suicide and the layered influence of the film Full Metal Jacket on both men. As Andy Smart navigates the worlds of his past, present, and future, Kubrick's Vietnam war movie casts its long shadow over him; his is a story of what it means to live each day as a sequel to the last. This isn't just a suicide memoir or a survivor's victory lap, but a book about the hardest truths of bei...

Readers of Princess Sultana's extraordinary biography Princess were gripped by her powerful indictment of women's lives behind the veil within the royal family of Saudi Arabia. They were every bit as fascinated by the sequel, Daughters of Arabia.Here, the princess turns the spotlight on her two daughters, Maha and Amani, both teenagers. Surrounded by untold opulence and luxury from the day they were born, but stifled by the unbearably restrictive lifestyle imposed on them, they rea...

Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law provides a penetrating, unusually intimate look into Saudi society and the bin Laden family's role within it, as well as the treatment of Saudi women.On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her ...

August Book Sense PickA fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed 'scientist of women.' A purring, voluptuous siren. A young shop-girl enduring the clammy touch of her boss and hating herself for accepting the modest banknotes he tucks into her pocket afterward. An earnest, devout young doorman, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism. A cynical, secretly gay newspaper editor, helplessly in love with a peasant security guard. A roof-squatting tailor, schemi...

**From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire."Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." —The Washington Post Book World**A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. ...

"In this satisfying, lyrical memoir," an American woman discovers her true faith—and true love—by converting to Islam and moving to Egypt ( Publishers Weekly).Raised in Boulder, Colorado, G. Willow Wilson moved to Egypt and converted to Islam shortly after college. Having written extensively on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine, Wilson now shares her remarkable...

In British-occupied Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 revolution, respected landowner Abd el-Aziz Gaafar has fallen on hard times. Bankrupt, he moves his family to Cairo and takes a menial job at the Automobile Club, a luxurious lodge for its European members, where Egyptians appear only as fearful servants. When Abd el-Aziz’s pride gets the better of him and he stands up for himself, he is subjected to a corporal punishment that ultimately kills him—leaving two of his sons obliged to work in ...

In 1948, as violence erupts in Jerusalem, a young Arab woman, Hind Husseini, finds fifty-five abandoned children in the streets and faces the biggest challenge of her life. Hind establishes the Dar El-Tifel orphanage, dedicating her life to providing love, support and education to the children, changing their destiny.As the years pass and the conflict rages on, Hind finds that - despite her best efforts - some of her older students are taking part in the violent struggle for Palest...