This book traces the dynamics of international rivalry from the late 1970s up through the present. Among the members of the dominant North political discord has become prominent recently in debates ranging from the Balkan Wars to the Second Gulf War. Yet a wide array of disputes--launching of global positioning systems to steel imports--have shattered the semblance of unity and cooperation among the members of the North, the triad of Europe, U.S., and east Asia. The book explores the subve...

2008 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineConventional scholarship on the Mediterranean portrays the Inner Sea as a timeless entity with unchanging ecological and agrarian features. But, Faruk Tabak argues, some of the "traditional" and "olden" characteristics that we attribute to it today are actually products of relatively recent developments. Locating the shifting fortunes of Mediterranean city-states and empires in patterns of long-term economic and ecological ch...