Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life
Author: Queen Noor
Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa Najeeb Halaby became the fourth wife of King Hussein at age 27. With her husband being not only Jordan's monarch but the spiritual leader of all Muslims, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. This moving memoir provides a timely look at one woman's story against a backdrop of 30 turbulent years: the displacement of over 1 million Palestinians by the creation of Israel, King Hussein's frustrated efforts for peace, and the effect of Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War on Jordan and the royal family. Queen Noor offers intimate new glimpses of King Hussein, Saddam Hussein, Queen Elizabeth, Arafat, and many other world leaders.
Houston Chronicle
Queen Noor has led a more interesting, committed life than the majority of authors writing their memoirs...it's hard to imagine a better story.
New York Times Book Review
Candid...an affecting wifely portrait of King Hussein.
USA Today
The book's ending has real power. Hussein's death from lymphoma was a painful ordeal for him, his wife, his family and his small grieving country.
Yet he conducted himself with kindness and concern for others to the end. If Queen Noor's object was to make the Arab world more human and understandable, she has succeeded. — Deirdre Donahue
The New York Times
Leap of Faith will not dispel its author's impression that she has often been misunderstood. On one hand, this is a glossy and decorous account of the queen's unusual experiences, with a polite tendency to accentuate the positive. ("I urged everyone I worked with to speak freely and offer honest, constructive criticism.") On the other, it is a fiery account of her husband's frustrations in dealing with international diplomacy in general and the United States and Israel in particular. — Janet Maslin
Publishers Weekly
Anyone who loved The King and I will readily warm to the love story of Queen Noor and the late King Hussein of Jordan. Born in America in 1951 as Lisa Halaby, Noor came from a wealthy, well-connected family and was part of Princeton's first co-ed class. Her father's aviation business produced a chance meeting with King Hussein in 1976, and a year or two later Noor realized the king was courting her. He was 41, she was 26. The rumor mills buzzed: was she the next Grace Kelly? Before long, the king renamed her Noor (light in Arabic), and she converted to Islam. They were married in the summer of 1978. From this point on, her story is mostly his, mainly covering his attempts to broker peace in the Middle East. There are meetings with Arafat, Saddam Hussein, American presidents and other leaders. Noor details Hussein's struggles to create Arab unity and his vision of peaceful coexistence with Israel. Her own activities developing village-based economic self-sufficiency projects and improving Jordan's medical, educational and cultural facilities take second place to her husband's struggles on the world stage. And while she occasionally acknowledges her domestic difficulties, Noor is careful not to allow personal problems to become any more than asides. Her pleasing memoir ends with the king's death after his struggle with cancer, although readers may suspect that this smart, courageous woman will remain a world presence for years to come. (On sale Mar. 18) Forecast: The legions of royalty fans will clamor for this long-awaited memoir, and with the queen's appearances on Good Morning America and Larry King Live, an excerpt in this month's Vogue and ubiquitous reviews, it should draw readers. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
We love stories about princesses. This particular royal tale is true and shows that being a contemporary princess (or queen) involves a tremendous amount of responsibility and not a little loneliness. Of Jordanian and Swedish descent, American-born and Princeton-educated Lisa Najeeb Halaby was 26 years old when she became the fourth wife of Jordan's King Hussein in 1978. Upon her conversion to Islam he chose Noor Al Hussein as her Arabic name, meaning "Light of Hussein." The Arab-Israeli conflict and Hussein's efforts at peacemaking are a large part of this work, part love story, part political commentary, told naturally from the Jordanian side. Hussein's stance estranged him at times from other Arabs (in particular Egyptians) as well as from Israelis, a point Noor emphasizes perhaps to make him more appealing to American readers. In addition to raising their four children (and his eight from previous marriages) and traveling with her husband, she chaired the board of the Noor Al Hussein Foundation, which promotes culture and development in Jordan, with an emphasis on women's issues. She now works with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Noor ably reads the introduction, but the rest of the book is narrated by Suzanne Toren, whose precise, cultured tone is exactly what we expect from a queen.-Nann Blaine Hilyard, Zion-Benton P.L., IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
What People Are Saying
Diane Sawyer
Extremely eloquent, very personal, very candid.
—Good Morning America
Table of Contents:
| Chapter 1 | First Impressions | 1 |
| Chapter 2 | Roots | 9 |
| Chapter 3 | Tehran Journal | 35 |
| Chapter 4 | An Audience with the King | 45 |
| Chapter 5 | A Leap of Faith | 79 |
| Chapter 6 | Honeymoon at Gleneagles | 105 |
| Chapter 7 | A Young Bride in the Royal Household | 127 |
| Chapter 8 | Pomp and Circumstance | 145 |
| Chapter 9 | One Crisis after Another | 155 |
| Chapter 10 | America through New Eyes | 189 |
| Chapter 11 | At Home and Abroad | 219 |
| Chapter 12 | "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" | 245 |
| Chapter 13 | Parenthood | 269 |
| Chapter 14 | Growing Pains | 289 |
| Chapter 15 | Prelude to War | 299 |
| Chapter 16 | Fire in the Gulf | 327 |
| Chapter 17 | Test of Faith | 337 |
| Chapter 18 | A Day Like No Other | 351 |
| Chapter 19 | The Edge of the Abyss | 383 |
| Chapter 20 | The White Bird | 399 |
| Chapter 21 | The Skies Cried | 423 |
| Epilogue | 437 |
See also: Sigma Maigre :le Guide d'un Praticien
Fate of Liberty
Author: Mark E Neely Jr
Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, but he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. In fact, Lincoln’s record on the Constitution and civil liberties has fueled more than a century of debate—from charges that he singled out Democrats for harrassment to his depiction as an absolute dictator. Mark E. Neely, Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history wades straight into the controversy, exploring the whole range of Lincoln’s constitutional polices, as well as showing just who was jailed and why.
According to Neely, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus was a well-intentioned response to a floodtide of unforeseen events: the direct threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, contraband trade with the South, corruption among army contractors, and the outcry against the first military draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records from military courts and federal prisons, as well as memoirs and archives, Neely paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with his legendary statesmanship intact—mindful of political realities, prone to temper the sentences of military courts, and more concerned with prosecuting the war effectively than with persecuting his opponents.
Neely also explores abuses of power under a regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread anti-Semitism among Union generals and officials,and the common practice of seizing civilian hostages. He finds that though the system of justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal or political partisanship than from inefficiency and the complexities of modern war.
“A major contribution, both to Lincoln literature and to the history of the Civil War.”
—Don E. Fehrenbacher, author of The Dred Scott Case
“This is a brilliant book. Mark Neely has brought to his study of the most bitterly contested aspect of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency his own distinctive blend of scholarship, story-telling, and plain common sense.”
—Geoffrey C. Ward, coauthor of The Civil War (with Ken and Ric Burns)
“This, the most original book about Lincoln in many a year, gives for the first time a true and adequate account of his policies in regard to civil liberties.
—Richard Nelson Current, author of Lincoln’s Loyalists
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