The contributors to this book offer an explanation of Soviet and U.S. policy in the Middle East by exploring how the superpowers define their goals in the region, the factors that both stimulate and constrain the United States and the Soviet Union in the implementation of their objectives, and how their mutual perceptions influence behavior. The ch

This book, first published in 1985, examines the whole problem of peacemaking in the Arab-Israel conflict. It considers the different countries involved, the changing positions they have adopted over time and the range of opinion within each country. It looks at the role of the superpowers and shows how their vacillations and their viewing of the conflict in simple terms as part of the global superpower rivalry have been unfortunate. It examines how a typical uncommitted medium power – Can...

For more than three decades, the Soviet Union was a major force in the Middle East, and superpower rivalry exacerbated many of the conflicts endemic to the region. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have fundamentally altered the rules of the game in Middle East politics, producing a new fluidity in the region, new diplomatic alignments, and new opportunities for peace. The contributors place recent developments in historical and political context, analyzing chang...

In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team first melted a piece of this unique material, they were shocked to find perfectly preserved leaves, twigs, and moss. That observation led them to a startling discovery: Greenland's ice sheet had melted naturally before, about 400,000 years ago.In When the Ice Is Gone, Bierman traces the story of th...

This survival guide for new pilots identifies the pitfalls waiting inside the killing zone, the period from 50 to 350 flight hours when they leave their instructors behind and fly as pilot in command for the first time. Although they're privately certified, many of these unseasoned aviators are unaware of the potential accidents that lie ahead while trying to build decision-making skills on their own—many times falling victim to inexperience.Based on the first in-depth scientific s...

The San Francisco Bay Area is generally considered the most expensive regional housing market in the country. Because the region added jobs and residents at a faster rate than housing, rents and home prices escalated. Moreover, small municipalities, common in the most job-rich parts of the Bay Area, have strong political incentives to resist development of new multifamily housing. Regional Governance and the Politics of Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area explains how a decentra...

With Malcolm Gladwell–like clarity, Churn captures the most commonplace tensions of life in a multifaceted democracy and how to minimize their corrosive effects in everyday life.A pioneer of social psychology, Claude M. Steele is renowned for Whistling Vivaldi, a runaway bestseller that analyzed societal stereotypes—from beliefs about racial and gender test score gaps to the athletic prowess of Black men—and how t...

A revelatory work—grounded in the author's own pathbreaking research—that explores the capacity for meaning-making and connection through "musical daydreams."We've all had the experience: a song comes on, and suddenly we're not where we were. We're back in the past, or living out a future that never happened, or imagining a scene that never existed. In Transported, Elizabeth Margulis explores the phenomenon of musical daydreams—the vivid, spontaneous, emot...

Compulsive, shattering, if not fundamentally disruptive, Returning emerges as one of the most important and searingly honest family sagas of our time.Nicholas Lemann, a veteran New Yorker correspondent, grew up in New Orleans, the son of German Jews in a world of gilded privilege. Yet in contrast to his parents’ generation, which always sought to downplay their religious background, Lemann was intrigued by his roo...

**“Constantly fascinating and impeccably reported...You won’t look at yourself in the same way again.” —Ed Yong, bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain MultitudesA captivating exploration of the remarkable ways our DNA mutates over the course of our lives, with radical implications for the future of medicine**Our DNA is the indispensable set of instructions that guides our growth and vitality. The common misconception is that this molecular b...

"A vital book about the ridiculously cozy relationship between corporate wealth and government power and how it only seems to be getting worse" (William Cohan, author of Money and Power).In the United States today we have good reasons to be afraid. Our Bill of Rights has been rendered powerless by ubiquitous surveillance and our freedoms are impaired by government control of information, systemic financial corruption, and unfettered corporate influence in ...

Although the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, European slavery in America began more than a century before. In a work distinguished not only by its original research but by its “passionate prose” (James F. Brooks), historian Linford Fisher demonstrates how the enslavement of Indigenous people began in the years just after 1492, ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas. Although largely erased from the public consciousness, Native ensl...