Genres > Cultural

Spain

New Releases Tagged "Spain"

The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance

Most Read This Week Tagged "Spain"

More most read this week tagged "spain"...

Lists

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

La catedral del mar by Ildefonso Falcones

Spain

514 books — 245 voters

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

Of Kings and Queens

477 books — 202 voters

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Europe Minus Men and English

854 books — 229 voters

The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys

Historical Fiction - Spain / Portugal

131 books — 28 voters

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

When Secrets Bloom by Patricia Furstenberg

Paul & Kiki's Guide to Vacationing in Italy by Paul Stuart

Adventure Travel & Exploration In Europe

128 books — 107 voters

The Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott

Muslim Women In Southern Spain by Gunther Dietz

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Muslim Women In Europe

43 books — 7 voters

Related Genres

Fiction
Cultural
Ficțion
Fiçtion

Featured News & Interviews

New Voices Alert! 51 New & Upcoming Debut Novels

Read »

“ In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance. ”
― Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra

3 likes

“ Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a fo Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action. ...more ”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

33 likes

More quotes...