Kenneth Waltz’s 1979 Theory of International Politics is credited with bringing about a “scientific revolution” in the study of international relations – bringing the field into a new era of systematic study. The book is also a lesson in reasoning carefully and critically. Good reasoning is exemplified by arguments that move systematically, through carefully organised stages, taking into account opposing stances and ideas as they move towards a logical conclusion. Theory of Intern...

The most straightforward overview available covering the entire criminal justice system. A 'no frills' explanation for beginners.

For those who lived through the Cold War period, and for many of the historians who study it, it seemed self-evident that the critical incidents that determined its course took place in the northern hemisphere, specifically in the face-off between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe. In this view, the Berlin Wall mattered more than the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the Soviet intervention in Hungary was vastly more significant than Soviet intervention in Korea. It was only the fine balance of powe...

Hamid Dabashi’s 1997 work Theology of Discontent reveals a creative thinker capable not only of understanding how an argument is built, but also of redefining old issues in new ways. The Iranian Revolution of 1978–9 was front-page news in the West, and in some ways remains so today. Though it was an uprising against authoritarian royal rule, with a coalition of modernisers and Islamists, the revolution saw the birth of a new Islamic Republic that seemed to reject pro-Western democ...

Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential career–it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century. Kissinger initially trained as a university professor before becoming Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon in 1973 – a position in which he both won t...

Few works of history make as well-structured a case for the importance of studying continuity, rather than change, than Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples.Hourani’s work had three major aims: to refute the idea that Arab society stagnated between 1000 and 1800; to study the period through the lens of diverse Arab, rather than Muslim, history; and to stress intellectual and cultural continuity. All of these intentions were the product of the author’s evaluation ...

Hamid Dabashi’s 2007 Iran: A People Interrupted is simultaneously subtle, passionate, polarizing and polemical. A concise account of Iranian history from the early 19th-century onward, Dabashi’s book uses his incisive analytical skills as a basis for creating a persuasive argument against the views of Iran that predominate in the West.In Dabashi’s view, Western approaches to Iran have been colored time and time again by the assumption that it is somehow trapped between reg...

This volume offers a wide-ranging examination of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), featuring fresh regional and international perspectives derived from recently available new archival material.Three decades ago Iran and Iraq became embroiled in a devastating eight-year war which served to re-define the international relations of the Gulf region. The Iran–Iraq War stands as an anomaly in the Cold War era; it was the only significant conflict in which the interests of the United States an...

One of America’s foremost statesmen, Henry Kissinger was interested in how different countries, in different periods, in all parts of the globe have attempted to impose order on an often chaotic world. World Order sets out his understanding of how we make sense of the world politically. Kissinger identifies four principal competing methods by which order has been and is still sought: the European, Chinese, Islamic, and American, none of which is dominant. He asks whether a new, universal w...

Written amid the political fallout and ‘war on terror’ following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York—Dabashi’s adopted city—in 2001, Iran: A People Interrupted offers an insider’s insight into the Iranian psyche. Exploring more than 200 years of Iran’s cultural history, the book shows how Iranian poets, writers, and thinkers have always reflected the people’s long struggle against both foreign and domestic tyranny. Dabashi weaves in his own stories of growing up under the Shah of Iran a...

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East.In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have engulfed multiple countries and political climes from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen, were driven by a 'Delayed Defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike - that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism. Sketching a new geograp...

In this magisterial work, Sami Zubaida draws on a distinguished career's worth of experience trying to understand the region to address the fundamental question in Middle East studies: what is the Middle East? He argues, controversially, that to see it through the prism of Islam, as it is conventionally viewed, is to completely misunderstand it. Many of what we think of as the 'Islamic' characteristics of the region are products of culture and society, not religion.To think of Islam itself...