Examining his roles as warrior, scholar, spy master, and diplomat, this chronicle of Colonel Bill Eddy’s life details the origin and early development of the U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relationship and its implications on present-day Middle East policy. From his birth in the Presbyterian missionary community in Lebanon to his service in intelligence operations in World Wars I and II to his involvement in academia and his close friendship with Abdul Aziz ibn Saud—the founding king of Saudi Arabia—this narrative traces the unheralded Marine Corps officer’s intimate ties with the Arab world and his unending dedication to promoting good relations between America and the Middle East.

Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East

Biographies & Memoirs

Lippman, Thomas W.

Historical

Selwa Press

Illuminating a little-known but extremely significant period in world history—the discovery of oil in the Middle East and the beginnings of what is now the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco)—this captivating history explores the birth of the Middle Eastern oil industry. From the king and his royal court to the desert guides, scientists, and mechanics who built the original oil company, Aramco, the distant and desperately poor world of Depression-era Saudi Arabia is vividly brought to life. Written more than 50 years ago, this detailed account serves as a kind of time capsule and features the author’s prescient insights into the cultural and technological consequences of King Ibn Saud’s deliberate decision to choose America as his commercial ally.

Discovery!: The Search for Arabian Oil

Business & Money

Stegner, Wallace

Industries

Ibn Saud: King by Conquest

Riyadh: January 16th, 1902. A 23 year-old prince leads a handful of men to reclaim his father's kingdom from the oppressive reign of the Al Rashid and their overseer, Ajlan. Hours later Ajlan is dead and Ibn Saud, flushed with victory, struts the battlements of the Mismak fortress shouting to the people in the street below, "Who is on my side? Who? Your own prince is with you again!" So begins this masterful biography of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud: visionary, warrior, and founding father. A man who imposed his will on the Arabian peninsula to transform Saudi Arabia into a global power. Ibn Saud's life story reads like an adventure novel, but it is absolutely true. Now exclusively available through CreateSpace, the Amazon subsidiary that serves you worldwide.

Ibn Saud: King By Conquest

History

Sander, Nestor

Middle East

Reluctant corporate investigator Greta Greenberry picks her way through a minefield of body parts in tasty hot wing buckets, crooked executives, skeevy lawyers, chucklehead rednecks, oleaginous clergy, hapless workers, gun-toting federales and piles of dead bodies (not counting the chickens) to find herself hog-tied in a freezer face-to-face with a grisly truth. Watch out Hiassen, Barry and Dorsey! Grease up the pompadour and press your black 501s because Sijin Belle, your prom queen from Hell has arrived - well actually Mississippi but that’s close enough. Her debut novel does for Big Poultry what Cristopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking did for Big Tobacco. “Another lurid addition to wacko crime and zany murder fiction, to be avoided at all costs by the serious reader.” Jonathan Fanzeni “More fun than playing Beer Pong with Billy Carter.” Preston Beekus “Loathe Mississippi? Well, #&*% you and the Big Chicken you rode in on!” Rep. Clyde Munger IV (Ret.), Halflitre, Mississippi

Big Chicken

Literature & Fiction

Belle, Sijin

Humor & Satire

When Sultan Qaboos bin Said deposed his father in 1970, he inherited a neglected country with a modest oil income, but virtually no one qualified to advocate for his interests to the executives of Shell Oil until he found James Critchfield. A decorated combat officer in World War II, Critchfield joined the CIA in 1948 and retired 26 years later as the first man to hold the position of national intelligence officer for energy. He was a specialist in the geopolitics of energy who was eminently suited to begin his third career. Originally contracted to advise the Sultanate on oil policy, Critchfield s company Tetra Tech International gradually expanded its role to include the development of the nation s water and maritime resources as well as major infrastructure projects in the vital Musandam Peninsula and the Buraimi oasis. Lois Critchfield s history of Tetra Tech is a behind-the-scenes view of just exactly how such development programs are conceived and implemented on a national scale. She details the technical, financial and political considerations involved in these projects and reflects upon their implications thirty-five years later. Oman Emerges is a case study in international commerce and industry that is most valuable for its insight into the age-old conflict between corporate and national interests.

Oman Emerges

Lois M. Critchfield

To follow up his first book of short stories Arabian Son, Tim Barger, the imp of Satan as his mother used to call him, has returned with more stories set in the almost mythical days of Dhahran in the fifties. A small, bare bones oil company town surrounded by miles of desert in every direction, it was home to about a two thousand Americans, maybe six hundreds families and several hundred children. Tim was one of them. These tales are about the barely supervised exploits of Tim and his friends as well as some of the colorful characters of the era: the pioneering Abqaiq housewife Martha, the driller Clark Randall, the stoic Gil Strader, and the legendary John Ames. Barger’s stories take you to places that few have even imagined. He offers a glimpse of the often unseen: the pure, but orchestrated chaos of the used car suq in Riyadh, the solemn quiet at the bottom of a 50 feet deep artesian well in Qatif, the rocky slopes of Jebel Shamaal or the splendor of Half Moon Bay at night with a crackling camp fire and a full moon rising. Careless can mean care free, “without a care in the world,” but it is mostly used to describe reckless decision making i.e. stupidity. Barger was both care free and prone to ill-conceived adventures in which the only possible upside was that he would survive to tell the tale. And he has.

Christmas in Khobar: More Stories

Humor & Entertainment

Barger, Tim

Goodwin, Ellen

Humor

Living in a house on 11th Street in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Tim Barger grew up in the 1950s thinking that blinding heat, humidity and howling dust-storms were normal. By seven he had already experienced several locust plagues and was looking forward to the next one. Arabian Son is a collection of stories about Barger and his friends’ misguided attempts to amuse themselves in an oil camp lean on amenities and devoid of movies and TV. Crawling through hedges frosted with DDT, climbing hundred-foot radio towers, spelunking through a subterranean maze of air conditioning vents, ten-year-olds, they made the most of the world they had. Neither they, nor their parents, had the vaguest idea that Aramco would soon become the anchor of the global petroleum economy. The boys riding their bikes off of rooftops into dense hedges only knew that they were laughing themselves silly. They could not have realized just how soon their Dhahran would recede into the rear-view mirror to vanish into progress.

Arabian Son: 21 Stories

Arts & Literature

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Books by Selwa Press