President Barack Obama's first trip abroad in his second term took him to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, where he despondently admitted to those waiting for words of encouragement, "It is a hard slog to work through all of these issues." Contrast this gloomy assessment with Obama's optimism on the second day of his first term, when he appointed former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as his special envoy for Middle East peace, boldly asserting that his administration would "ac...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR“A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York TimesWinner of the Natan Book Award...

**WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • In a thrilling dramatic narrative, the award-winning reporter traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents.“Gripping. . . . For readers interested in the roots of the Islamic State and the evil genius of its godfather, there is no better book to begin with than Black Flags.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times**Dra...

Robert Fisk’s bestselling eyewitness account of the events that have shaped the Middle East is alive with vivid reporting and incisive historical analysis.The history of the Middle East is an epic story of tragedy, betrayal and world-shaking events. It is a story that Robert Fisk has been reporting for over thirty years. His masterful narrative spans the most volatile regions of the Middle East, chronicling with both rage and compassion the death by deceit of tens of thousands of M...

A bold reexamination of U.S. influence in the Middle East during the Cold War.The Arab Spring, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Iraq war, and the Syrian civil war—these contemporary conflicts have deep roots in the Middle East’s postwar emergence from colonialism.In The Pragmatic Superpower, foreign policy experts Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon reframe the legacy of U.S. involvement in the Arab world from 1945 to 1991 and shed new light on the makings of...

The ongoing conflict in Western Sahara is one of the more intractable legacies of European colonization in North Africa. Following the withdrawal of Spain, this territorial dispute escalated in 1975 into a war of independence between the Sahrawi people of the Polisario Front, who were backed by Algeria, and the states of Mauritania and Morocco. In 1976, the Polisario Front established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was not admitted in the UN but won recognition by a few states...

The massive dimensions of Syria's refugee crisis—and the search for solutionsThe civil war in Syria has forced some 10 million people—more than half the country's population—from their homes and communities, creating one of the largest human displacements since the end of World War II. Daily headlines testify to their plight, both within Syria and in the countries to which they have fled.The Consequences of Chaos looks beyond the ever-increasing numbers of Syria's ...

This volume discusses the entry of Greece and Turkey to NATO in 1952 from the perspective of history and international relations. The chapters were originally collected in 2012 to mark the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the accession of the two states to NATO. The focus is not on the diplomatic/political events that led to the accession (a subject which has already been extensively discussed in the available bibliography), but expands on a reassessment of this event for the two st...

Egypt's January 25 Revolution of 2011 was a dramatic demonstration of the role social media has come to play in radical activism. A key moment was the appearance of the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said," which linked activists across the country. But how useful are social media in radical politics? And how readily can they be turned against the activists?Revolution in the Age of Social Media looks at the role of that seminal Facebook page and the conspiracy theories t...

The contradictory trends of the 'post-Arab Spring' landscape form both the backdrop to, and the focus of, this volume on the changing security dynamics of the Persian Gulf, defined as the six GCC states plus Iraq and Iran. The political and economic upheaval triggered by the uprisings of 2011, and the rapid emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2014, have underscored the vulnerability of regional states to an intersection of domestic pressures and external shocks. The initial...

How do the norms of the liberal international order affect the activity of Islamist movements? This book analyzes and assesses the extent to which Islamist groups, which have traditionally attempted to shield their communities from “alien” moral conceptions, have been affected by the rules and principles that regulate international society. Through an analysis of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Filippo Dionigi concludes that international norms are among the most significant factors changing Islamist...

The Arab Uprisings have brought renewed attention to the role of the military in the MENA region, where they are either the backbone of regime power or a crucial part of patronage networks in political systems. This collection of essays from international experts examines the economic interests of armed actors ranging from military businesses in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Jordan, Sudan, and Yemen to retired military officers’ economic endeavors and the web of funding of non-state armed...