Since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, traditional American foreign policy has proven inadequate to 21st Century challenges of Islamic terrorism and globalization.In this ground-breaking analysis, author James Kurth explains that the roots of America's current foreign policy crisis lie in contradictions of an American empire which attempted to transform traditional American national interests promoted by Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and FD...

In Family and Civilization, the distinguished Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman demonstrates the close and causal connections between the rise and fall of different types of families and the rise and fall of civilizations, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, medieval and modern Europe, and the United States. Zimmerman traces the evolution of family structure from tribes and clans to extended and large nuclear families to the smaller, often broken families of today. And he show...

In The West at War, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together renowned scholars and public policy experts to reflect on perhaps the most pressing problem of our time-the West's increasingly bloody conflict with forces that seek nothing less than its destruction. In eleven provocative chapters, contributors deal with the internal challenges and external conflicts facing Western civilization in the context of the 'war on terror.' Ranging from the nature of Islam and the West, to ethics and terror...

The definition and understanding of "terrorism" is in a state of unprecedented evolution. No longer are acts of terrorism rare and far-flung. Following the horrendous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. citizens have had their eyes opened to a new world where this nightmare stalks the daily news and is never far from consciousness.Attacking Terrorism brings together some of the world's finest experts, people who have made the study of this rising menac...

This is a book about the answers that historians, philosophers, theologians, practising politicians and would-be revolutionaries have given to one question:how should human beings best govern themselves? That question raises innumerable others: can we manage our own affairs at all? Should we even try? Many people in the past have thought that only some individuals were either able or entitled to practise self-government: Greeks, but not Persians; men, but not women; the better-off minority...

Thanks to collapsing birthrates, much of Europe is on a path of willed self-extinction. The untold story is that birthrates in Muslim nations are declining faster than anywhere elseâ??at a rate never before documented. Europe, even in its decline, may have the resources to support an aging population, if at a terrible economic and cultural cost. But in the impoverished Islamic world, an aging population means a civilization on the brink of total collapseâ?? something Islamic terrorists kno...

“This is at the top of my list for best books on terrorism.”–Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants KillHow can the most powerful country in the world feel so threatened by an enemy infinitely weaker than we are? How can loving parents and otherwise responsible citizens join terrorist movements? How can anyone possibly believe that the cause of Islam can be advanced by murdering passengers on a bus or an airplane? In this important new ...

A Short History of European Law brings to life 2,500 years of legal history, tying current norms to the circumstances of their conception. Tamar Herzog describes how successive legal systems built upon one another, from ancient times through the European Union. Roman law formed the backbone of each configuration, though the way it was used and reshaped varied dramatically from one century and place to the next. Only by considering Continental civil law and English common law toget...

Scruton shows how the different religious and philosophical roots of Western and Islamic societies have resulted in those societies' profoundly divergent beliefs about the nature of political order. For one thing, the idea of the social contract, crucial to the self-conception of Western nations, is entirely absent in Islamic societies. Similarly, Scruton explains why the notions of territorial jurisdiction, citizenship, and the independent legitimacy of secular authority and law are both ...

“A landmark study."—Robin Wright, The New YorkerWhy every terrorist movement comes to an end—and how this history can help us combat today's terrorist threatsAmid the fear following 9/11 and more recent terror attacks, it is easy to forget the most important fact about terrorist campaigns: they always come to an end—and often far more quickly than expected. Contrary to what many assume, when it comes to dealing with terrorism it ma...

In this provocative but balanced essay, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He prompts us to consider why political systems evolve, how politics offers both power and order in our society, whether democracy is always a good thing, and what future politics may have in the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subjec...

In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contra...