Diwan Bookstore knows how to make our summer a bit cooler with their summer book recommendations to read on hot days. Here are 5 books about motherhood, global warming, the secret, and more.

1. The Push

By Audrain Ashley

A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family – and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for – and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is a woman who is trying desperately to be the perfect mother that everyone else seems to be, but she’s struggling. Soon, she begins to wonder if there’s something genuinely wrong with her daughter, Violet, though her husband insists it isn’t true.

As the story unfolds in this gripping and suspenseful domestic drama, Audrain explores motherhood, the limits of unconditional love, and how the consequences of our actions can travel across generations.

2. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

By Bill Gates

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical – and accessible plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide toward certain environmental disaster.

In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.

3. The Greatest Secret

By Rhonda Byrne

Bestselling author Rhonda Byrne launched a global phenomenon with the publication of The Secret in 2006. This life-altering work helped readers understand the untapped powers that reside within.

The Greatest Secret is a quantum leap that will take the reader beyond the material world and into the spiritual realm, where all possibilities exist. The teachings in these pages offer accessible practices that can be put to use immediately and profound revelations that will dissolve fears and uncertainty, anxiety and pain.

4. Shuggie Bain

By Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drug epidemic is waiting in the wings.

5. The Soul of a Woman

By Isabel Allende

“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have.

As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues.

She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.

More book recommendations

Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary-general of the Arab League, former ambassador, and former Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, is the author of a two-volume memoir, Egypt’s Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: My Testimony (AUC Press, 2020) and Witness to War and Peace: Egypt, the October War, and Beyond (AUC Press, 2018).

Aboul Gheit took the time to reflect on his past career gave us a glimpse into its inner workings, from the 1973 war to 9/11. He shared with us significant milestones as well as insight into Egyptian foreign policy.

Describe to us an unforgettable moment from your illustrious career and the circumstances around it?

To be honest there were multiple milestones and events that I consider truly significant during my decades of service to Egypt. Perhaps the most important was on the 6^th of October in 1973, the day President Sadat took Egypt to war to reclaim the Sinai and restore Egypt’s military honor. I delve extensively into my experiences on that day in my first memoir. They will remain forever ingrained in my memory. But there were of course other defining moments or events of major significance, such as the 9/11 attacks in the United States, when I was serving as Egypt’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, and I quickly realized the immensity of the challenges that would await us in addressing this event and its regional and global ramifications.

You once said that there are many foreign diplomats, writers, and journalists “who do not know how Egyptian foreign policy is planned, conducted, how operations are done, and how we coordinate action.” Could one say there are characteristics specific to Egypt’s foreign policy?

Egypt has been, and will always remain, a pivotal state in its region. It has also always been a state with a strong leadership, and with strong institutions that serve its foreign policy objectives.

It is always easy for an outsider to judge the foreign policy decisions of any government, but this judgment is neither fully fair nor accurate since the outsider is never privy to the decision-making process itself or to the factors that lead to the formulation of any policy.

But I think it is fair to say that Egypt’s foreign policy has always been characterized as principled, balanced, and steadfast and firmly grounded in serving the wider immediate and long-term national interests of the state and its people.

Does Egypt’s strategic geography dictate much of the country’s foreign policy?

Geography has always been a determinant factor in defining Egypt’s foreign policy throughout its history. These are factors that no country can escape, and they have offered Egypt countless opportunities as well as successive challenges.

They have led Egypt to assume its leadership role in the Arab world and region at large, made Africa, and in particular the countries of the Nile river basin, a priority focus for any Egyptian government, and compelled Egypt to serve as a bridge between its region and Europe. But Egypt is a large and important country, and its foreign policy is defined by interests and objectives that most certainly transcend its geography and span beyond its region.

What was it really like to be such a close witness and a direct player in the making of history of the Middle East during such critical years?

It was, first and foremost, the highest honor to serve my country, and be intricately involved in safeguarding its interests and promoting its objectives. The Middle East has always been a region of strategic importance and to be engaged in formulating and then implementing the foreign policy of Egypt—as the largest actor in the region—vis-à-vis the Middle East was both an immense responsibility and an equally fulfilling achievement.