West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story

A passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict
Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. 
West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn back to the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism.
Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.

Biographies & Memoirs

ANSARY, TAMIM

Community & Culture

Picador

A passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn back to the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism. Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Road Trips, a memoir by Tamim Ansary, recounts stories from his years as part of the American ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture, after he arrived from Afghanistan where he was born and raised. The book revolves around three arduous journeys he launched from his home base in Portland, Oregon, between 1969, when he hitchhiked across North America with five dollars in his pocket, and 1975, when he and a girlfriend went on a four-month road trip that ended up in the Yucatan jungle near the ruins of Tulum. These odysseys are bracketed by a prologue, in which ten-year-old Ansary accompanies his father on a journey to find a legendary alabaster mountain in southwestern Afghanistan; and an epilogue, in which Ansary stumbles on a sheaf of long-lost letters from his counterculture years. The stories unfold against the familiar background of communes and collectives, Woodstock and Watergate, sex, dope, acid, rock’n’roll, and the end of civilization as we know it, but at heart this is not a history of those all too-well-chronicled times; it’s a mythic private story of which we all have some idiosyncratic version of our own: the passage from wonderstruck childhood through tortured adulthood to contemplative old age.

Road Trips, Becoming an American in the vapor trail of The Sixties

Literature & Fiction

Kajakai Press

Sinking the Ark

Humor & Satire

Kajaki Press

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. One of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West, Ansary's book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.

West Of Kabul, East Of New York: An Afghan American Story (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

Children's Books

Turtleback Books

We in the west share a common narrative of world history—that runs from the Nile Valley and Mesopotomia, through Greece and Rome and the French Revolution, to the rise of the secular state and the triumph of democracy. But our story largely omits a whole civilization that until quite recently saw itself at the center of world history, and whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years.
In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized—had somehow hijacked destiny. Entertaining and enlightening, Destiny Disrupted also offers a vital perspective on current conflicts.

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

History

Asia

PublicAffairs

The Western narrative of world history largely omits a whole civilization. Destiny Disrupted tells the history of the world from the Islamic point of view, and restores the centrality of the Muslim perspective, ignored for a thousand years. In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as it looks from a new perspective: with the evolution of the Muslim community at the center. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed through a succession of far-flung empires, to the tangle of modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11. He introduces the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history, imparting not only what happened but how it is understood from the Muslim perspective. He clarifies why two great civilizations-Western and Muslim-grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe-a place it long perceived as primitive-had somehow hijacked destiny. With storytelling brio, humor, and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary illuminates a fascinating parallel to the world narrative usually heard in the West. Destiny Disrupted offers a vital perspective on world conflicts many now find so puzzling.

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

Ancient Civilizations

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real; but it sits atop an older struggle, between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan: a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.
 Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out, and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every 40 to 60 years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style, and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.

Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan

By the author of Destiny Disrupted: An enlightening, lively, accessible, history of Afghanistan from 1840 to today, from the Afghan point of view, that illuminates how Great Power conflicts have interrupted an ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation. Five times in the last two centuries, some great power has tried to invade, occupy, or otherwise take control of Afghanistan. And as Tamim Ansary shows in this illuminating history, every intervention has come to grief in much the same way and for much the same reason: The intervening power has failed to understand that Afghanistan has a story of its own, a story that continues to unfold between, and despite, the interventions. Games without Rules tells this story from the inside looking out. Drawing on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources, Ansary weaves an epic that moves from a universe of village republics--the old Afghanistan--through a tumultuous drama of tribes, factions, and forces, to the current struggle. Ansary paints a richly textured portrait of a nation that began to form around the same time as the United States but is still struggling to coalesce; a nation driven by its high ambitions but undermined by its own demons, while every forty to sixty years a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. A compelling narrative told in an accessible, conversational style, Games without Rules offers revelatory insight into a country long at the center of international debate, but never fully understood by the outside world.

Games Without Rules

From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

World

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Books by ANSARY, TAMIM

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ANSARY, TAMIM. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story

West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story

Road Trips, Becoming an American in the vapor trail of The Sixties

Sinking the Ark

West Of Kabul, East Of New York: An Afghan American Story (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan

Games Without Rules

The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection