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America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy Of American Nationalism Anatol Lieven (September, 2004) America keeps a fine house, Anatol Lieven writes, "but in its cellar there lives a demon, whose name is nationalism." In this controversial critique of America's role in the world, Lieven contends that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 has been shaped by the special character of our national identity, which embraces two contradictory features. One, "The American Creed," is a civic nationalism which espouses liberty, democracy, and the rule of law. It is our greatest legacy to the world. But our almost religious belief in the "Creed" creates a tendency toward a dangerously "messianic" element in American nationalism, the desire to extend American values and American democracy to the whole world, irrespective of the needs and desires of others. The other feature, Jacksonian nationalism, has its roots in the aggrieved, embittered, and defensive White America, centered in the American South. Where the "Creed" is optimistic and triumphalist, Jacksonian nationalism is fed by a profound pessimism and a sense of personal, social, religious, and sectional defeat. Lieven examines how these two antithetical impulses have played out in recent US policy, especially in the Middle East and in the nature of U.S. support for Israel. He suggests that in this region, the uneasy combination of policies based on two contradictory traditions have gravely undermined U.S. credibility and complicated the war against terrorism. It has never been more vital that Americans understand our national character. This hard-hitting critique directs a spotlight on the American political soul and on the curious mixture of chauvinism and idealism that has driven the Bush administration.
America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke (June 2004) Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke are experienced, conservative foreign policy experts. Halper served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, and Clarke had extensive service in the British diplomatic corps. In America Alone they document the neoconservative capture of American (and British) foreign policy, under the guise of a War on Terror, to reorder Middle East politics and initiate a newly proclaimed doctrine of preemptive war. Halper and Clarke are insiders who know the players and the sources. Their thoughtful, insightful work spans ideological and partisan differences, a rare phenomenon in these times. The authors understand the two-centuries-long history of American foreign policy. Detente, bipartisanship and respect for the views of allies are at the center of that history; they are not, as the neocons would have it, notions of weakness best replaced by a militant American world view and unilateralism. Halper and Clarke blend realism and idealism. For them, victory in the Cold War resulted from a firm U.S. adherence to the doctrine of containment and a moral authority rooted in fostering the idea of a free, open society. Now, the authors contend, President George W. Bush and a band of ideological zealots have put that moral authority at risk. (Washington Post)
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East Rashid Khalidi (May 2004) Khalidi dares to use the "e" word in the good, old-fashioned American sense: as a term of reproach. What the United States is doing in the Middle East differs in form from Europe's system of mandates, protectorates, and colonies, but it is empire all the same -- mission civilisatrice yesterday, regime change and democratization today. Khalidi, armed with a deep knowledge of the region, demonstrates that the legacy of past empires has conditioned present-day Middle Easterners to resist outside control, direct or indirect; whatever benefits might accrue to the intrusive outsider come only at great cost. Khalidi takes on the usual topics -- including the geopolitics of oil and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- and offers insightful historical parallels to present a powerful case for a U.S. foreign policy more focused on "soft power." (Foreign Affairs)
After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order Emmanuel Todd, C. Jon Delogu and, Michael Lind (December 2003) This book has been a best-seller in France and Germany. The author is French and, generally, is contemptuous of US imperialism. This stance is not be confused with being contemptuous of the US itself, as Todd’s approach has been characterized improperly as "anti-Americanism." Fundamentally, the author sees US imperialism as a muscle-bound giant with feet of clay, whose military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere, obscure this decline. He scores the US left and the US ruling class alike for their inability to comprehend this reality. "Far from being on the verge of world domination," he argues, "America is steadily losing control throughout the world." A trend that has been lost sight of, he says, is the closer cooperation between Russia and the European Union – notably Germany and France – which he sees as more than a match for US imperialism. (Political Affairs)
The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic Chalmers Johnson (January 2004) Johnson believes nearly every region of the world has a justifiable grievance against America, so that when the 9/11 attacks occurred, he writes, at first "I myself thought that [they] could be blowback from American policies in any number of places, including Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Greece, all of central America or Okinawa, not to mention Palestine and Iran". As for Bush, Johnson claims that oil interests drove the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein - a fairly common view from the left. He also believes that the need for control over oil from central Asia "appears to have been a major consideration in the Bush administration's decision to attack Afghanistan on October 7 2001". He concludes that America now faces "the sorrows of empire": a state of perpetual war, soon with weapons of mass destruction; the end of constitutional democracy, with a Pentagonised presidency; and the bankruptcy of the US economy. (The Guardian)
Incoherent Empire Michael Mann (October 2003) Mann believes that this "imperial project" depends on a wildly inflated measure of American power; the United States may have awesome military muscle, but its political and economic capabilities are less overwhelming. This imbalance causes Washington to overemphasize the use of force, turning the quest for empire into "overconfident and hyperactive militarism." Such militarism generates what Mann calls "incoherent empire," which undermines U.S. leadership and creates more, not fewer, terrorists and rogue states. In his distinguished scholarly work on the history of social power, Mann, a sociologist, has argued that four types of power drive the rise and fall of states, nations, empires, regions, and civilizations: military, political, economic, and ideological. Applying these categories to the United States, Mann concludes that it is, in a jumble of metaphors, "a military giant, a back-seat economic driver, a political schizophrenic, and an ideological phantom."
Against All Enemies Richard A. Clarke (March 2004) Few political memoirs have made such a dramatic entrance as that by Richard A. Clarke. During the week of the initial publication of Against All Enemies, Clarke was featured on 60 Minutes, testified before the 9/11 commission, and touched off a raging controversy over how the presidential administration handled the threat of terrorism and the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Clarke, a veteran Washington insider who had advised presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, dissects each man's approach to terrorism but levels the harshest criticism at the latter Bush and his advisors who, Clarke asserts, failed to take terrorism and Al-Qaeda seriously.
The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet James Mann (March 2004) Mann, a former correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, offers a lucid, nonpolemical and carefully researched history of President Bush's foreign policy team, the self-described "Vulcans" (after the Roman god of fire). In doing so, Mann illuminates the administration's rationale for the Iraqi war with impressive clarity. For the Vulcans, he shows, the war is not an anomalous foreign adventure or a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. On the contrary, the foreign policy, devised by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, was 35 years in the making and has its roots in the Republican Party faction that opposed detente with the Soviet Union. Vulcan philosophy has three major tenets: the embrace of pre-emptive action, the notion of an "unchallengeable American superpower" and the systematic export of America's democratic values.
Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush John W. Dean (March 2004) As Richard Nixon's White House counsel during the Watergate scandal, John Dean famously warned his boss that there was "a cancer on the presidency" that would bring down the administration unless Nixon came clean. In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," Dean warns the country that the Bush administration is even more secretive and authoritarian than Nixon's -- in fact, he writes, it's "the most secretive presidency of my lifetime." "To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement," he adds. "I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." (Salon)
House of Bush, House of Saud : The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties Craig Unger (March 2004) House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a politically explosive question: How is it that two days after 9/11, when U.S. air traffic was tightly restricted, 140 Saudis, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to leave the country without being questioned by U.S. intelligence? The answer lies in a hidden relationship that began in the 1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud began courting American politicians in a bid for military protection, influence, and investment opportunity. With the Bush family, the Saudis hit a gusher -- direct access to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. To trace the amazing weave of Saud-Bush connections, Unger interviewed three former directors of the CIA, top Saudi and Israeli intelligence officials, and more than one hundred other sources.His access to major players is unparalleled and often exclusive -- including executives at the Carlyle Group, the giant investment firm where the House of Bush and the House of Saud each has a major stake.
At the Abyss : An Insider's History of the Cold War Thomas Reed (March 2004) In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official. Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War. At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it. "In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes. "The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982. "While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation." (Washington Post, February 27, 2004)
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush Kevin Phillips (January, 2004) The Bushes are the family nobody really knows, says Kevin Phillips. This popular lack of acquaintance -- nurtured by gauzy imagery of Maine summer cottages, gray-haired national grandmothers, July Fourth sparklers, and cowboy boots -- has let national politics create a dynasticized presidency that would have horrified America’s founding fathers. They, after all, had led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges. In this devastating book, onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since World War One, becoming entrenched within the American establishment -- Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the presidency -- through a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, and political deception. By uncovering relationships and connecting facts with new clarity, Phillips comes to a stunning conclusion: The Bush family has systematically used its financial and social empire -- its "aristocracy" -- to gain the White House, thereby subverting the very core of American democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans. As America -- and the world -- holds its breath for the 2004 presidential election, American Dynasty explains how it happened and what it all means.
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill Ron Suskind (January, 2004) The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill traces the former Alcoa CEO's rise and fall through the Administration: from his return to Washington to work for his third President, whom he believed would govern from the sensible center, through O'Neill's disillusionment, to his firing, executed in a surreal conversation with Cheney, a man he once considered a fellow traveler. Suskind had access not only to O'Neill but also to the saddlebags he took with him when he left town, which included a minute-by-minute accounting of his 23 months in office and 19,000 pages of documents on CD-ROM. So, what does O'Neill reveal? According to the book, ideology and electoral politics so dominated the domestic-policy process during his tenure that it was often impossible to have a rational exchange of ideas. The incurious President was so opaque on some important issues that top Cabinet officials were left guessing his mind even after face-to-face meetings. Cheney is portrayed as an unstoppable force, unbowed by inconvenient facts as he drives Administration policy toward his goals. (Time, January 10, 2004)
The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century Paul Krugman (September 2003) In this long-awaited work containing Krugman's most influential columns along with new commentary, he chronicles how the boom economy unraveled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, how fiscal responsibility collapsed. From his account of the secret history of the California energy crisis to his devastating dissections of dishonesty in the Bush administration, Krugman tells the uncomfortable truth about how the United States lost its way. And he gives us the road map we will need to follow if we are to get the country back on track.
The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power George Soros (December 2003) The legendary investor and philanthropist issues a pointed, astute, and intensely critical analysis of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Long known as "the world's only private citizen with a foreign policy," George Soros combines his razor-sharp sense of economic trends with his passionate advocacy for open societies and decency in world politics to come up with a workable, and severely critical, analysis of the Bush administration's overreaching, militaristic foreign policy.
Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country--And Its Time to Take It Back Jim Hightower (August 2003) Hightower defines "Kleptocrat Nation" as "a body of people ruled by thieves...a government characterized by the practice of transferring money and power from the many to the few...[and] a ruling class of moneyed elites that usurps liberty, justice, sovereignty, and other, democratic rights from the people." His catalogue of corporate greed and governmental complicity is breathtaking in scope, and though he admits that the fusion of business and government is not new, he persuasively states that "never have so few done so much for so few."
The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception David Corn (September 2003) All American presidents have lied, but George W. Bush has relentlessly abused the truth. In this scathing indictment of the president and his inner circle, David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation, reveals and examines the deceptions at the heart of the Bush presidency. In a stunning work of journalism, he details and substantiates the many times the Bush administration has knowingly and intentionally misled the American public to advance its own interests and agenda.
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq Sheldon Rampton, John C. Stauber (July 2003) As government officials and observers battle over whether or not the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence reports of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify war, there should be a ready audience for this new book by the authors of Believe Us, We're Experts! Professional debunkers of media manipulation, Rampton and Stauber unmask the impact of "information warriors and perception managers" (as one PR consultant described himself) on Bush's attempt to turn public opinion in favor of war on Iraq.
America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy Ivo H. Daalder, James M. Lindsay (October 2003) George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions impose on its freedom of action. He has insisted that an America unbound is a more secure America. How did a man once mocked for knowing little about the world come to be a foreign policy revolutionary? In America Unbound, Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay dismiss claims that neoconservatives have captured the heart and mind of the president. They show that George W. Bush has been no one’s puppet.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning Chris Hedges (June 2003) "The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation," writes Chris Hedges, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges draws on his experiences covering conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel as well as works of literature from the Iliad to Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism to look at what makes war so intoxicating for soldiers, politicians and ordinary citizens. He discusses outbreaks of nationalism, the wartime silencing of intellectuals and artists, the ways in which even a supposedly skeptical press glorifies the battlefield and other universal features of war, arguing not for pacifism but for responsibility and humility on the part of those who wage war.
Ripples of Battle : How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think Victor Hanson (September 2003) What defines a "watershed event," a moment in history that changes the world forever? Victor Davis Hanson tackles this intriguing question in Ripples of Battle, an eye-opening look at three great military encounters: Okinawa, Shiloh, and Delium, an obscure battle of the Peloponnesian War. A master of military detail, Hanson describes the strategies and tactics, and the terrible cost in human life, of each battle. These vivid accounts set the stage for a wider inquiry into the long-term, often unintended, consequences of war.
War Talk Arundhati Roy (April 2003) War Talk collects new essays by this prolific writer. Her work highlights the global rise of religious and racial violence. From the horrific pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat, India, to U.S. demands for a war on Iraq, Roy confronts the call to militarism. Desperately working against the backdrop of the nuclear recklessness between her homeland and Pakistan, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity. And throughout her essays, Roy interrogates her own roles as "writer" and "activist."
Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy Benjamin R. Barber (September 2003) The author of Jihad vs. McWorld analyzes how American foreign policy has gone wrong—and how it could go right. In this hard-hitting book, Benjamin R. Barber—one of the world's most inspiring voices on behalf of democratic citizenship—marshals American political and diplomatic history to lambast the Bush administration's attempt to fight fear (of terrorism) with fear (of "preventive" war).
The New Rulers of the World John Pilger (April 2003) The award-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger selects from his recent Guardian and New Statesman essays on power, its secrets and illusions, for this new collection. The New Rulers of the World tackles the injustices and double standards inherent in the politics of globalization. It sets out to explain something of the "new" order -- the unholy alliance of business interests, media magnates and imperial repression -- and the importance of breaking the silence that protects great power and its manipulations.
Imperial America : The Bush Assault on the World Order John Newhouse (September 2003) John Newhouse describes the ways in which America’s relationship with much of the world went wrong after the events of September 11, 2001, the moment when most nations were ready to accept U.S. leadership in a war against terrorism. Newhouse poses important questions: Why didn’t the Bush administration exploit this rare opportunity to stabilize the Middle East, and Southwest and Northeast Asia? How have the administration’s truculent behavior, misguided actions, and inaction at critical moments undermined efforts to curb the production of weapons of mass destruction? Why have Bush and his cabinet laid down edicts that have served chiefly to upset and sharpen the insecurities of other nations, including some of our allies?
Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World Robert Jay Lifton (October 2003) No one is better equipped than psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton -- a leading scholar of thought control and mass violence -- to make sense of the extreme moment. From Hiroshima survivors to Nazi doctors, from Vietnam veterans to the cult that sarin-gassed the Tokyo subways, he has explained to us global apocalyptic urges, the ravages of psychic numbness, and the psychology of the survivor. Now, as al- Qaeda's desire to purify the earth of "evil" meets the unilateral urge to dominate the globe's sole superpower, Lifton believes we have arrived at a remarkably perilous moment.
Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom Cynthia Brown (Editor) (September 2003) Most Americans are probably unaware of the scope of the 2001 U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, an attempt to safeguard the country against future terrorist attacks. In contrast, each of the 13 authors of this series of essays, many of whom are lawyers with groups devoted to protecting civil liberties such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, is totally immersed in the act's most arcane provisions. Animated by passion, and informed by considerable intellect, the essays catalogue a long list of civil liberties central to a democratic society that, in their view, have been sacrificed in the Bush administration's haste to strengthen national security.
Enemy Aliens David Cole (September 2003) Since September 11, the United States government has detained more than 1,200 people in connection with its investigation of that day's attacks, not a single one of whom has been charged with any crime. In Enemy Aliens, award-winning author and Georgetown law professor David Cole argues that such steps represent a dangerous sacrifice of the liberty of immigrants for the purported security of the majority. He argues that we have relied on a double standard, imposing measures on foreigners that we would not tolerate if they were applied more broadly to us all.
The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance Nat Hentoff (September 2003) "The Constitution," said Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ominously in March, 2003, "just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." In The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance, nationally syndicated columnist and Village Voice mainstay Nat Hentoff draws on untapped sources -- from reporters, resisters, and civil liberties law professors across the country to administration insiders -- to piece together the true dimensions of the current assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire Claes G. Ryn (October 2003) Urged on by politicians and intellectuals, the president of the United States has committed America to a quest for empire. In his view, American values and principles are universal, and should guide a remaking of the world. The new worldview asserts a right to strike preemptively and unilaterally against any potential threat. Implicit is a call for sufficient military might to discourage any nation from challenging the will of the United States. Claes Ryn sees this drive for a virtuous empire as the culmination of an ideological movement that has galvanized the minds and imaginations of many American intellectuals in the last several decades.
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers Daniel Ellsberg (October 2002) Ellsberg's transformation from cold warrior and Defense Department analyst to impassioned antiwar crusader who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in June 1971 makes a remarkable and riveting story that still shocks 30 years later. Avoiding, for the most part, self-justification and self-aggrandizement, he clearly relates the experiences that led him to reject as arrogant lies the premises six presidents presented to the public and Congress to secure support for the Vietnam War.
Century of War: Politics, Conflicts, and Society Since 1914 Gabriel Kolko (September 1995) Over the last three decades the historian Gabriel Kolko has redefined the way we look at modern warfare and its social and political effects. Century of War gives us a masterly synthesis of the effects of war on civilian populations and the political results of these traumatizing experiences in the twentieth century.
Another Century of War? Gabriel Kolko (September 2002) America, Kolko contends, reacts to the complexity of world affairs with its advanced technology and superior firepower, not with realistic political response and negotiation. He offers a critical and well-informed assessment of whether such a policy offers any hope of attaining greater security for America. Raising the same hard-hitting questions that made his Century of War a "crucial" (Globe and Mail) assessment of our age of conflict, Kolko asks whether the wars of the future will end differently from those in our past.
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire Chalmers Johnson (April 2003) The term "blowback," invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms.
Why Do People Hate America? Ziauddin Sardar, Merryl Wyn Davies (March 2003) If America refuses to reflect upon its history, its uses and abuses of power and wealth at home and abroad, the consequences of its lifestyle and abundance, the relations between quality of life and values, the relation between ideals and practical application of those ideals to all of its people, then what chance has the rest of the world of engaging America in reasoned discussion?
Manhattan to Baghdad: Dispatches from the Frontline in the War on Terrorism Paul McGeough (April 2003) McGeough, veteran war correspondent and a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, offers a sobering look at the disparate battlefields of America's war on terrorism in his new collection of musings from the front. An eyewitness to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, he travels on assignment through Central Asia and the Middle East, ending up in Baghdad in October 2002 to report on the impending U.S.-led military action against Iraq.
Leo Strauss and the American Right Shadia B. Drury (March 1999) After the Republican Party drafted its Contract With America in 1994, the New York Times traced the document's neoconservative ideology to the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973), a German Jewish emigre and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago during the 1950s and '60s. Dubbed by the media as the "godfather of the conservative revolution," Strauss, according to Drury, was considered to be the shadowy force behind the Republican Party, as his teachings were being spread by former students and admirers like Allan Bloom, Clarence Thomas, William Bennett and Irving Kristol.
Incoherent Empire Michael Mann (October 2003) The US is a military giant, better at devastating than pacifying countries. It is politically schizophrenic, split between multilateralism, unilateralism, and an actual inability to rule over foreign lands or control its own supposed client states. It is only a back-seat driver of the global economy, not steering but prodding poorer countries toward an unproductive and unpopular neoliberalism. Finally, it is an ideological phantom, proclaiming attractive values of freedom, democracy, and material plenty to the world, which its militarism brutally contradicts.
The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military Dana Priest (February 2003) Since the end of the Cold War, writes Dana Priest in The Mission, "U.S. leaders have been turning more and more to the military to solve problems that are often, at their root, political and economic." Priest contends that "long before September 11, the U.S. government had grown increasingly dependent on its military to carry out its foreign affairs. The shift was incremental, little noticed, de facto.... The military simply filled a vacuum left by an indecisive White House, an atrophied State Department, and a distracted Congress."
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions Clyde Prestowitz Rogue Nation is not an argument against American dominance or the exercise of American power. It's an argument against stupidity, arrogance and ignorance in the exercise of power. Prestowitz explores the historical roots of the unilateral impulse and shows how it now influences every important area of American foreign policy: trade and economic policy, arms control, energy, environment, agriculture. In every area, he argues, a multilateral approach, consistent with our humane and liberal core values, is also in our long-term best interests.
At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World Michael Hirsh (May 2003) How is it that the same country that gave the world Woodrow Wilson's crusade for a League of Nations to guarantee peace has now also given us George Bush's dismissal of the United Nations as an irrelevance to the waging of war? A longtime diplomatic correspondent, Hirsch has watched closely as America has stumbled into being the only superpower to survive the cold war.
The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century Charles Kupchan (October 2002) A former National Security Council staffer and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Kupchan eloquently describes the historical trends and long-term patterns within European and American foreign policy that help reinforce his projections detailing the end of the American era.
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone Joseph S. Nye Jr. (January 2002) "Unilateralism, arrogance, and parochialism" the U.S. must abandon these traits in a post-Sept. 11 world, says Nye, former assistant secretary of defense and now dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He explains eloquently the principles he believes should govern American foreign policy in the decades ahead. His starting point is the preponderance of American power in today's world. Nye distinguishes between hard power (military and economic strength) and soft power (openness, prosperity and similar values that persuade and attract rather than coerce others). Nye argues that a dominant state needs both kinds of power, and that the current information revolution and the related phenomenon of globalization call for the exercise of soft more than hard power.
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author Michael T. Klare (March 2002) International security expert Michael T. Klare argues that in the early decades of the new millennium, wars will be fought not over ideology but over access to dwindling supplies of precious natural commodities. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, have given way to a global scramble for oil, natural gas, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as a primary objective, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those areas where competition for essential materials overlaps with long-standing territorial and religious disputes.
The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership Zbigniew Brzezinski (March 2004) The overwhelming reality of our time is this: In the opening years of the 21st century, the United States finds itself not only the most powerful nation on earth but the most powerful nation that has ever existed. Given the contradictory roles America plays in the world, we are fated to be the catalyst for either a new global community or for global chaos. If we don't lead, Zbigniew Brzezinski contends, rather than merely dominate by force, we could face worldwide hostility much like the regional hostility now confronting Israel.
Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil James Bovard (September 2003) "The war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new Millennium." So begins Jim Bovard's newest and, in some ways, most provocative book as he casts yet another jaundiced eye on Washington and the motives behind protecting "the homeland" and prosecuting a wildly unpopular war with Iraq. For James Bovard, as always, it all comes down to a trampling of personal liberty and an end to privacy as we know it. From airport security follies that protect no one to increased surveillance of individuals and skyrocketing numbers of detainees, the war on terrorism is taking a toll on individual liberty and no one tells the whole grisly story better than Bovard.
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A Pretext for War : 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies James Bamford (May 2004) Bamford homes in on the systematic weaknesses that led the intelligence community to ignore or misinterpret evidence of the impending terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Using impeccable sources in the intelligence communities, he shows that the Bush administration was, from its inception, more interested in pursuing a dubious agenda in Iraq than hunting terrorists like Osama bin Laden. From the mishandling of 9/11 to the still-unproven claims about Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction, to recent allegations about the threat Iran poses to the world, Bamford argues that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends.
Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib Seymour M. Hersh (September 2004) Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's "war on terror" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. He reveals the connections between early missteps in the hunt for Al Qaeda and disasters on the ground in Iraq. The book includes a new account of Hersh's pursuit of the Abu Ghraib story and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a crucial chapter in America's recent history. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.
The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions Micah L. Sifry (Editor), Christopher Cerf (Editor) (May 2003) Despite the torrent of coverage devoted to war with Iraq, woefully little attention has been paid to the history of the region, the policies that led to the conflict, and the daunting challenges that will confront America and the Middle East once the immediate crisis has ended. In this collection, Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, coeditors of the acclaimed Gulf War Reader, have assembled essays and documents that present an eminently readable, up-to-the-moment guide -- from every imaginable perspective -- to the continuing crisis in the Gulf and Middle East. Here, in analysis and commentary from some of the world's leading writers and opinion makers -- and in the words of the key participants themselves -- is the engrossing saga of how oil economics, power politics, dreams of empire, nationalist yearnings, and religious fanaticism -- not to mention naked aggression, betrayal, and tragic miscalculation -- have conspired to bring us to the fateful collision of the West and the Arab world over Iraq.
Orientalism Edward Said (1979) My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, so that "our" east, "our" orient becomes "ours" to possess and direct. And I have a very high regard for the powers and gifts of the peoples of that region to struggle on for their vision of what they are and want to be. There has been so massive and calculatedly aggressive an attack on contemporary Arab and Muslim societies for their backwardness, lack of democracy, and abrogation of women's rights that we simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and democracy are by no means simple and agreed-upon concepts that one either does or does not find like Easter eggs in the living-room. The breathtaking insouciance of jejune publicists who speak in the name of foreign policy and who have no knowledge at all of the language real people actually speak, has fabricated an arid landscape ready for American power to construct there an ersatz model of free market "democracy". Edward Said
A Brutal Friendship : The West and The Arab Elite Said K. Aburish (1998) In A Brutal Friendship, Said K. Aburish traces the true origins of the region's present turmoil to the manner in which corrupt Arab rulers have subordinated the welfare of their subjects to their cultivation of cozy relationships with the West. Using direct evidence from his unrivaled range of Arab sources, he describes how the West -- mostly the CIA -- sponsored Islamic fundamentalism in the 1950s and '60s in an effort to contain Nasser and thwart Soviet designs on the region, how American and British leaders have turned a blind eye to repressive governments when they suit their interests (and toppled them when they do not), and how it is these very machinations that set Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on his bloody road to power.
Secrets and Lies : Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Collapse of American Power in the Middle East Dilip Hiro (January 2004) The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, masterminded by U.S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is the single most important event since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Just as that break-up ushered in a new era in international relations following the end of a bipolar world system, this war has given a new twist to the present global order. Secrets and Lies tells in detail how Operation Iraqi Freedom came about, what it means and where it is likely to lead the Middle East and the world at large. It reveals the scope of the "dirty tricks" used by the Anglo-American alliance to sell the war through the phony intelligence reports and the exaggeration of Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction. It examines the media campaign to win hearts and minds-including the stage management and spin surrounding the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. Picking up from the author's recently celebrated essay in the New York Times, "Why the Mullahs Love a Revolution," this leading authority on the Middle East provides us with his skeptical view of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and his examination of the future in Middle East.
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East David Fromkin (October 2001) The Middle East has long been a battleground of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and dynasties. All of these conflicts -- including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis that have flared up yet again -- stem from its political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed upon the region by the Allies after the First World War. In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography and politics of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when everything -- even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism-seemed possible, Fromkin raises questions about what might have been done differently and answers questions about why things were done as they were. The current battle for a Palestinian homeland has its roots in these events of eighty-five years ago.
The Shi'is of Iraq Yitzhak Nakash (March 2003) The Shi'is of Iraq provides a comprehensive history of Iraq's majority group and its turbulent relations with the ruling Sunni minority. Yitzhak Nakash challenges the widely held belief that Shi'i society and politics in Iraq are a reflection of Iranian Shi'ism, pointing to the strong Arab attributes of Iraqi Shi'ism. He contends that behind the power struggle in Iraq between Arab Sunnis and Shi'is there exist two sectarian groups that are quite similar. The tension fueling the sectarian problem between Sunnis and Shi'is is political rather than ethnic or cultural, and it reflects the competition of the two groups over the right to rule and to define the meaning of nationalism in Iraq. A new introduction brings this book into the new century and illuminates the role that Shi'is could play in a future Iraq after Saddam Hussein.
Disarming Iraq Hans Blix (March 2004) Disarming Iraq is an insider's account of the diplomatic and inspection efforts leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Though a bit dry, the book is logically presented and gives an excellent background on the inspections process and the politics surrounding it. Hans Blix, who came out of retirement in 2000 to lead the inspections effort, was often bashed by American politicians and journalists, but he does not use this forum to strike back. Instead, he allows the evidence to do the talking, only occasionally offering his own opinion. Blix stresses that he never trusted Hussein and that inspectors were often misled and stonewalled, but he also points out that they never found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction either. Though Blix welcomes the end of Hussein's brutal dictatorship, his removal was "neither the avowed aim nor the justification given" for the war -- WMDs were the issue. Therefore, he believes the invasion was unnecessary and possibly counterproductive in the long run and is disappointed that they were not given enough time to complete their task. "Containment had worked," he writes. "It has also become clear that national intelligence organizations and government hawks, but not the inspectors, had been wrong in their assessments."
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror Stephen Kinzer (July 2003) Half a century ago, the United States overthrew a Middle Eastern government for the first time. The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention. In this book, veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full account of this fateful operation. His account is centered around an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an assessment of the coup’s "haunting and terrible legacy." Operation Ajax, as the plot was code-named, reshaped the history of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. It restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne, allowing him to impose a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection. "It is not far-fetched," Kinzer asserts in this book, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah’s repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."
The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict Dilip Hiro (1991) In The Longest War, Dilip Hiro describes the causes and courses of the Iran-Iraq military conflict and its effect on the two antagonists, as well as the rest of the world. He reveals the intricate twists and turns of international diplomacy and the realpolitik behind the rhetoric, providing a comprehensive and admirably balanced account of the political and military aspects of the "longest war."
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran Elaine Sciolino (September 2001) "In 1979, a clerical revolution in Iran swept aside the inarguably corrupt government of Shah Reza Pahlavi and set in motion events that would make that nation a world pariah. In the place of one dictatorship came another, one led "by an old bearded cleric in a turban and cloak whose answer to the king's injustice was to wrap the country in a populist message of promise and smother it with an intolerant version of Islam." So writes Elaine Sciolino, a reporter for The New York Times who entered Iran with the Ayatollah Khomeini and who remained there for more than 20 years, providing American readers with memorable accounts that were less, it seemed, about politics and religion than about human nature. For Iran is a mass of contradictions, she writes, a country many of whose leaders press for forward-looking change while serving a government that seeks a return to the distant past, and whose citizens constantly seek ways to experiment "with two highly volatile chemicals--Islam and democracy." In her book, Sciolino travels the length and breadth of Iran, interviewing national leaders and citizens, turning up stories of resistance and accommodation that are at once hopeful and cautious.
The Last Great Revolution : Turmoil and Transformation in Iran Robin Wright (February 2001) The fervor of the early years of Iran's Islamic Revolution has worn off. Disillusionment and diversity have flourished. Iranians accept Islam as the foundation of their society, but not without substantial disagreement over exactly what that means. Robin Wright interviewed an eclectic array of thinkers, administrators, parliamentarians, and men and women on the street. They each have their own notions of what an Islamic Republic should look like, what its citizens should be allowed to do, how democracy should work, and who should have the ultimate authority.
Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire Jason Goodwin (January 2003) For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire's aid. In its last three hundred years the empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. In this striking evocation of the empire's power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In doing so, he also offers a long look back to the origins of problems that plague present-day Kosovars and Serbs.
Baghdad Sketches Freya Stark In the fall of 1928, Freya Stark, a thirty-five year old Englishwoman, set out on her first journey to the Middle East. Bolstered by a command of Arabic, a fair knowledge of Farsi, and an irrepressible drive that would characterize her more than five decades as a traveller and explorer, Stark spent most of the next four years in Iraq and Persia. There she visited ancient and medieval sites, and wrote for the Baghdad Times a series of pieces that in 1933 would be published in book form as Baghdad Sketches, her first in a long line of travel sketches.
The Valleys of the Assassins : and Other Persian Travels Freya Stark (1934) Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled between Iraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget. Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit the region's valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut, a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the Elburz Mountains Stark was the first to document for the Royal Geographical Society. Her account is at once a highly readable travel narrative and a richly drawn, sympathetic portrait of a people told from their own compelling point of view.
Persepolis : The Story of a Childhood Marjane Satrapi Marji tells of her life in Iran from the age of 10, when the Islamic revolution of 1979 reintroduced a religious state, through the age of 14 when the Iran-Iraq war forced her parents to send her to Europe for safety.
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How Israel Lost : The Four Questions Richard Ben Cramer (May 2004) Richard Ben Cramer is an enormously able storyteller who displays great moral sensitivity and personal bravery. He was, no doubt, very much aware of the fact that his new book would not make him very popular among the Jewish readership of Los Angeles, and even less so in New York, which constitute the major markets for this book. The book is a passionate love letter to Israel, albeit one written by a disillusioned, distant and bitter lover. "How Israel Lost" is a very important book because, beyond the emotions and the rich mosaic of small anecdotes, Cramer detects and diagnoses, with high precision, the potentially lethal maladies afflicting Israeli society. (Salon)
A History of Modern Palestine : One Land, Two Peoples Ilan Pappe (November 2003 2003) Ilan Pappe's book is the story of Palestine, a land inhabited by two peoples, and two national identities. It begins with the Ottomans in the early 1800s, the reign of Muhammad Ali, and traces a path through the arrival of the early Zionists at the end of that century, through the British mandate at the beginning of the twentieth century, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars and conflicts which culminated in the intifadas of 1987 and 2000. While these events provide the background to the narrative and explain the construction of Zionist and Palestinian nationalism, at center stage are those who lived through these times, men and women, children, peasants, workers, town-dwellers, Jews and Arabs. It is a story of coexistence and cooperation, as well as oppression, occupation, and exile. Ilan Pappe is well known as a revisionist historian of Palestine and a political commentator on the Israel-Palestine conflict. His book is a unique contribution to the history of this troubled land which all those concerned with developments is the Middle East will be compelled to read. Ilan Pappe teaches politics at Haifa University in Israel.
Breaking Ranks: Refusing to Serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Ronit Chacham (January 2004) Military service is an integral part of life in Israel: both men and women serve in the Israel Defense Forces; devotion to the country's survival is a given. So disobeying an order is a remarkable action-one discussed in depth here by nine "refuseniks," Israeli soldiers (all officers) who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. They tell Chacham, an Israeli cultural critic and fiction writer, about their upbringings, their crises of conscience, the mistreatment of Palestinians by themselves and others ("Our job was giving the Palestinians a hard time," says one), their attempt to reconcile support for Palestinian rights with devotion to their homeland, their refusals to serve and the consequences. "When you're there in the territories, you're committing crimes whether you like it or not....I'm not political," says one. "I speak from personal experience when I say I can't stand it anymore." Anyone trying to understand why these men have taken the action they have will be moved by their thoughtfulness and articulateness.
One Nation Under Israel Andrew Hurley (May 1999) While Israel's decisive victories on the battlefield and overwhelming advantage in military force are crucial to its dominance in the Middle East, perhaps just as important is the success of its propaganda campaign. Never has this been made clearer than in Tanya Reinhart's new book, which offers a well-documented account of Israel's culpability for the failure of the Oslo process and the current crisis. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 explains not only how the Israeli leadership has pulled off this public relations achievement but the importance of that PR in bolstering support for the Israeli project, both outside and inside the country. Drawing heavily on reports from the Israeli press that most US readers never see, Reinhart accomplishes the formidable task of adding insight into a subject that is written about endlessly, and doing so without equivocation but also without slipping into raw polemics. There is a refreshing bluntness and candor in her work that makes the political analysis particularly compelling.
Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 Tanya Reinhart (October 2002) Chomsky's seminal tome on Mideast politics has become a classic in the fields of political science and Mideast affairs. For its tenth printing, Chomsky has added chapters bringing the book completely up to date, with a new preface by Chomsky, a new foreword from Palestinian author and activist Edward W. Said, and new material on the Intifada, the ongoing Israeli-PLO "peace process" (including the Oslo and Wye accords), and Israel's war against Lebanon.
The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East David Hirst (March 2003) More than a decade before Israel's New Historians revolutionized the study of Israeli history, English journalist David Hirst wrote The Gun and the Olive Branch, a classic, myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hirst, former Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, traces the origins of the terrible conflict back to the 1880s to show how Arab violence, although often cruel and fanatical, is a response to the challenge of repeated aggression. The Gun and the Olive Branch is an absorbing, potentially controversial, history of the Middle Eastern conflict that is indispensable to anyone with an interest in world politics and by partisans of both sides. This classic and controversial account of the origins of the Middle East conflict returns to print updated with a lengthy introduction that reflects on the course of recent Middle Eastern history-especially the abortive Israeli-Palestinian peace process and 9/11.
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (new and revised edition) Norman G. Finkelstein (April 2003) This polemical study systematically undermines the popular and scholarly representations of the Israel- Palestine conflict. Opening with a theoretical discussion of Zionism and its roots, Norman Finkelstein goes on to look at the demographic origins of the Palestinians, referencing the work of Joan Peters and critiquing the influential studies of both Benny Morris and Anita Shapira, and closes by demonstrating that the casting of Israel as the innocent victim of Arab aggression in the June 1967 and October 1973 wars is not supported by the documentary record. In the material added for this new edition, including a new introduction, Finkelstein focuses his attention on the renewed efforts of scholars to justify the brutal actions of Israel in light of the ongoing failure of the peace process.
War Without End : Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land Anton La Guardia (June 2002) British journalist Anton La Guardia, diplomatic editor for the Daily Telegraph and for eight years its Middle East correspondent, offers an informed and objective history of the Middle East battles in War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land. Tracing the Zionist movement back to its 19th-century roots, as well as the birth of national identity of the Palestinians among whom the Zionists settled, La Guardia offers general readers a balanced background to what many fear may well be a war without end.
The Jewish State Theodor Herzl (1896) "I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, and to solve it we must first of all establish it as an international political problem to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council." Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism.
They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby Paul Findley (May 2003) The first book to speak out against the pervasive influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on American politics, policy, and institutions resonates today as never before. With careful documentation and specific case histories, former congressman Paul Findley demonstrates how the Israel lobby helps to shape important aspects of U.S. foreign policy and influences congressional, senatorial, and even presidential elections. Described are the undue influence AIPAC exerts in the Senate and the House and the pressure AIPAC brings to bear on university professors and journalists who seem too sympathetic to Arab and Islamic states and too critical of Israel and its policies.
The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust Tom Segev (November 2000) This controversial and powerful history is the first to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Drawing on diaries, interviews, and thousands of declassified documents, Tom Segev reconsiders the major struggles and personalities of Israel's past-Ben-Gurion, Begin, Nahum Goldmann-and argues that the nation's charged legacy has, at critical moments-the Exodus affair, the Eichmann trial, the case of John Demjanjuk-been molded and manipulated in accordance with the ideological requirements of the state. The Seventh Million uncovers a vast and complex story and reveals how the bitter events of decades past continue to shape the experiences not just of individuals but of a nation.
The Politics of Anti-Semitism Alexander Cockburn (Editor), Jeffrey St. Clair (Editor) (October 2003) "Antisemite!" How did a term, once used accurately to describe the most virulent evil, become a charge flung at the mildest critic of Israel, particularly concerning its atrocious treatment of Palestinians? One answer is that there's no more explosive topic in American public life today than the issue of Israel, its oppression of Palestinians and its influence on American politics. Yet the topic is one that is so hedged with anxiety, fury and fear, that honest discussion is often impossible.
When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege Raja Shehadeh (September 2003) In April 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters. A tank blocked Raja Shehadeh's road; Israeli soldiers seized his brother’s home and used him as a human shield during a search, as his frightened wife and children watched. When the Birds Stopped Singing reveals the rage and terror of daily life in these dire circumstances, showing how time passes for people imprisoned in their own homes, how they cope with being forbidden to cross the neighborhood to help a sick relative or dying friend. A chronicle of lives that somehow endure under impossible circumstances, Shehadeh's diary is a compelling and important document of a problem that seems increasingly beyond solution.
The Palestinian People : A History Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal (March 2003) Palestinians struggled to create themselves as a people from the first revolt of the Arabs in Palestine in 1834 through the British Mandate to the impact of Zionism and the founding of Israel. Their relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel has been fundamental in shaping that identity, and today Palestinians find themselves again at a critical juncture. In the 1990s cornerstones for peace were laid for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, including mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, and the establishment for the first time of Palestinian self-government. But the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a reversion to unmitigated hatred and mutual demonization. By mid-2002 the brutal violence of the Intifada had crippled Palestine's fledgling political institutions and threatened the fragile social cohesion painstakingly constructed after 1967. Kimmerling and Migdal unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.
I Saw Ramallah Mourid Barghouti (May 2003) Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile -- shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere “idea of Palestine,” he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.”
Palestine Joe Sacco, Edward Said (Introduction) (January 2002) Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist. Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict. In 1996, the Before Columbus Foundation awarded Palestine the seventeenth annual American Book Award, stating that the author should be recognized for his "outstanding contribution to American literature."
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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll (February 2004) Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll tells the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, from its covert program against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, to the rise of the Taliban and the emergence of bin Laden, to the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. Based on extensive firsthand accounts, Ghost Wars is the inside story that goes well beyond anything previously published on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It chronicles the roles of midlevel CIA officers, their Afghan allies, and top spy masters such as Bill Casey, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al Faisal, and George Tenet. And it describes heated debates within the American government and the often poisonous, mistrustful relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies. Ghost Wars answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?
The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland Karl Ernest Meyer (May 2003) When Charles de Gaulle learned that France's former colonies in Africa had chosen independence, the great general shrugged dismissively, "They are the dust of empire." But as Americans have learned, particles of dust from a remote and seemingly medieval country like Afghanistan can, at great human and material cost, jam the gears of a superpower. In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the present and past of the Asian heartland in a book that blends scholarship with reportage, providing fascinating detail about regions and peoples now of urgent concern to America: the five Central Asian republics, the Caspian and the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and long-dominant Russia. He provides the context for America's post-9/11 war on terrorism, for Washington's search for friends and allies in an Islamic world rife with extremism, and for the new politics of pipelines and human rights in an area possessing more of the former than the latter. He offers a rich and complicated tapestry of a region where empires have so often come to grief--a cautionary tale for Americans and their Western allies.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia Peter Hopkirk (April 1994) In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central Asia. At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of the British Empire. When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated the two rivals.
Conflict Unending Sumit Ganguly (April 2002) The escalating tensions between India and Pakistan have received renewed attention of late. Since their genesis in 1947, the nations of India and Pakistan have been locked in a seemingly endless spiral of hostility over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Ganguly asserts that the two nations remain mired in conflict due to inherent features of their nationalist agendas. Indian nationalist leadership chose to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to prove that minorities could thrive in a plural, secular polity. Pakistani nationalists argued with equal force that they could not part with Kashmir as part of the homeland created for the Muslims of South Asia. Ganguly authoritatively analyzes why hostility persists even after the dissipation of the pristine ideological visions of the two states and discusses their dual path to overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, as well as the current prospects for war and peace in the region.
Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia Karl Ernest Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac (October 2000) Meyers, a former London bureau chief for the Washington Post, and television documentary producer Brysac trace the origins of the Cold War to the "first" great geopolitical rivalry in modern history: the Anglo-Russian contest for control of the Indian subcontinent. The authors have mined numerous sources to tell how the "the Great Game," as contemporaries referred to it, spawned the creation of such things as spy services and the use of proxy wars.
The Bookseller of Kabul Asne Seierstad (October 2003) Seierstad, a Swedish journalist, entered Kabul with Northern Alliance soldiers after they ousted the Taliban. She took the rare opportunity to live with and write a book about the extended family of Sultan Khan, bookseller and entrepreneur. The result, organized around events in the lives of individual members of Khan's large clan (two wives, assorted children, mother, brothers, sisters, nephew), provides appropriate information about recent Afghani history, a glimpse from the inside at an Islamic family, and an understanding of the harshness and difficulty of the daily grind in Afghanistan--both under the Taliban and after the U.S. antiterrorist campaign.
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm Owen Bennett Jones (September 2003) Pakistan-with its political instability, vociferous Islamic community, pressing economic and social problems, access to nuclear weapons, and proximity to Afghanistan-stands at the very center of global attention. Can General Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, control the forces that helped create the Taliban in Afghanistan? In this fascinating book, journalist Owen Bennett Jones looks at Pakistan's turbulent past, recounts its recent history, and assesses its future options. A new introduction brings the account fully up to date.
Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban Stephen Tanner (July 2002) Stephen Tanner's Afghanistan: A Military History recounts with brisk authority and many illuminating analogies the 2,500-year story of a country--for much of that time it was more properly a region--of "incredible beauty" (soldiers liken it to western Colorado) that has been both the "coveted prize of empires" and, more recently, a hideout for international terrorists. What Afghanistan has known for virtually all of its history is war. Tanner tells, with a good narrative eye, of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan by Cyrus, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the British (disastrously), and the Soviet Union (only slightly less so), as well as the rise, and fall, of the Taliban, ending the book with a brief, speculative chapter on the country's present and future. Tucked in Tanner's overview are fascinating historical footnotes, including the Afghans' reliance over the centuries on its now-infamous caves, and its brief role in World War II--the Nazis felt a kinship with the blonde, blue-eyed segments of the population.
The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan Jon Lee Anderson (November 2002) Two weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, New York correspondent and best-selling author Jon Lee Anderson became one of the first Western journalists to get into Afghanistan. Anderson had reported on the mujahideen's war against the communist-backed government in Kabul more than a decade before, but the situation in Afghanistan now was unprecedentedly dangerous even for a seasoned reporter. There were no clearly demarcated front lines, and the roads were full of mines and bandits. Since most of the country had no electricity or phone lines, journalists communicated via satellite phones powered by gasoline generators. Anderson stayed in the country for months, filing stories that illuminate a high-technology conflict in a feudal terrain. In The Lion's Grave these reports are supplemented by vivid first-person e-mail accounts that take the reader onto the ground and into the process of reporting the war.
War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet, Revised Edition Eric S. Margolis (May 2002) Margolis plays witness to the escalating conflicts of the past decade, tracing disputes over Afghanistan, as well as those ever neighboring Kashmir and Tibet, back to their Cold War roots, exploring clashes that continue to threaten to destabilize the region today. Combining vivid first-hand accounts of a war correspondent with a historical and strategic overview of the region, Margolis guides the reader through the geopolitical complexities of the area and its key players.
The Sewing Circles of Herat : A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan Christina Lamb (December 2002) A gold-inscribed invitation to a wedding in a foreign land led Christina Lamb at the age of twenty-one to leave suburban England for Peshawar on the frontier of the Afghan war. Like the Englishmen in the Great Game of the nineteenth century, she was captivated by the Afghans she met. For two years she tracked the final stages of the mujaheddin victory over the Soviets as Afghan friends smuggled her in and out of their country in a variety of guises -- from burqa-clad wife to Kandahari boy -- travelling by foot, on donkeys or hidden under the floor of an ambulance. Among those friends was Abdul Haq, the recently executed Kabul commander, and Hamid Karzai, the new president of Afghanistan, who took Lamb to his hometown of Kandahar, where they rode around on the backs of motorbikes belonging to a group of fighters known as the Mullahs Front. It was these figures who went on to become founding members of the Taliban. Long haunted by her experiences in Afghanistan, Lamb returned there after the attacks on the World Trade Center to find out what had become of the people and places that had marked her life as a young graduate.
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia Ahmed Rashid (March 2001) Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban—the world's most extreme and radical Islamic organization—into sharp focus in this enormously insightful book. He offers the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers, explaining the Taliban's rise to power, its impact on Afghanistan and the region, its role in oil and gas company decisions, and the effects of changing American attitudes toward the Taliban. He also describes the new face of Islamic fundamentalism and explains why Afghanistan has become the world center for international terrorism.
Pakistan : In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan Mary Anne Weaver (September 2003) No nation is more critical to United States foreign policy than Pakistan. Wedged between India and Afghanistan, it is the second-largest country in the Islamic world, and is situated in one of the world's most volatile regions. It has also assumed a commanding role in militant Islam--a frightening portent being its embrace of Afghanistan's bizarre fundamentalist student militia, the Taliban. With a dozen or so private Islamist armies and some thirty to fifty nuclear weapons, it is considered one of the most frightening places on earth. Its disintegration would pose an unthinkable threat to the United States and the West, but the man who will determine Pakistan's future course is the little-known and enigmatic General Pervez Musharraf. Mary Anne Weaver presents her personal journey through a country in turmoil, reconstructing, largely in the voices of the key participants themselves--Generals Musharraf and Zia, and Benazir Bhutto--the legacies now haunting Pakistan in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored jihad of the 1980s in Afghanistan. Fusing geopolitical choices with a vivid portrait of a land--of its people, its mystery, and its clans--Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan provides an essential background for those seeking to understand the problems the international community now faces, and poses some deeply disturbing questions about the future of conflict in South Asia.
Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom John Follain, Rita Cristofari (March 2002) After both her parents were killed by the predecessors of the Taliban, the Mujahideen, Zoya took up her mother's work in RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and, with her grandmother, journeyed to Pakistan, where she could receive an education at a school run by RAWA. A few years later, Zoya returned to Afghanistan to help her people and get firsthand accounts of the horrors of the Taliban reign. Zoya herself witnessed public executions and amputations, but she also witnessed heartening displays of courage--women defying the Taliban by holding secret classes and shopping in the marketplace. Zoya remains skeptical about the future of Afghanistan after the Taliban, afraid that after the U.S. involvement ends, the Mujahideen will return to their old ways.
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Understanding Terror Networks Marc Sageman (April 2004) Marc Sageman is a former CIA case officer who worked undercover on the Afghan frontier during the 1980s. After he left the agency, he became a forensic psychiatrist specializing in the motivations of murderers and genocide perpetrators. Drawing upon open sources, Sageman studied the biographies of 172 jihadist terrorists, scrutinizing their stories for patterns. In Understanding Terror Networks he spreads out a feast of stimulating insights. Sageman concentrates on the small, loose, committed cells of young Muslim men that seem to form almost spontaneously in Europe or North Africa. The cell members pledge themselves to the global jihad, then develop the discipline and commitment needed to carry out a terrorist attack, sometimes by suicide. These Bunches of Guys, as they have been labeled half-facetiously, bind each other to secret membership and reinforce a mutual commitment to violence. The multinational Hamburg cell that executed the Sept. 11 attacks -- intimate, ultimately loyal but often arguing among themselves, as the Sept. 11 investigative commission recently showed -- is a prototype of the emerging global jihad. In another context such testosterone cliques might rob banks or brawl at local soccer matches. Here kinship and friendship networks, images of violence against Muslims, deepening faith and access to al Qaeda's resources can lead them to cross oceans and commit mass murder. (Washington Post)
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim : America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror Mahmood Mamdani (April 2004) Many of the many post-September 11 books probing the causes of Islamic terrorism invoke Samuel Huntington-esque notions about clashes of culture; many of the same books would like to dissociate the "war on terrorism" of the twenty-first century from the more conventional conflicts of the late twentieth century. Both these notions are Mamdani's targets in this book. Politicizing notions of Islam by differentiating between secular, Westernized ("good") Muslims and fanatical, medieval ("bad") Muslims, Mamdani argues, misrepresents the often apolitical character of Islam. It also dangerously ignores cold war-era American complicity in the turbulence of the Muslim world through the waging of proxy wars, particularly the one in Afghanistan in which, says Mamdani, the CIA created Osama bin Laden. Those familiar with Noam Chomsky's recent work will likely find some of Mamdani's arguments familiar, particularly his discussion of imperialistic political violence, racism, and the modern state. Where Mamdani is unique and particularly compelling, however, is in drawing on his African-studies background to back up his assertions about violence, terrorism and Islam.
Nuclear Terrorism : The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe Graham Allison (August 2004) A founding dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Allison applies a long, distinguished career in government and academia to this sobering—indeed frightening—presentation of U.S. vulnerability to a terrorist nuclear attack. While he begins by asserting such an attack is preventable, the balance of his text is anything but reassuring. Allison begins by describing the broad spectrum of groups who could intend a nuclear strike against the U.S. They range from an al-Qaeda with its own Manhattan Project to small and determined doomsday cults. Their tools can include a broad spectrum of weapons, either stolen or homemade from raw materials increasingly available worldwide. Once terrorists acquire a nuclear bomb, Allison argues, its delivery to an American target may be almost impossible to stop under current security measures. The Bush administration, correct in waging war against nuclear terrorism, has not, he says, yet developed a comprehensive counter strategy. Arguing that the only way to eliminate nuclear terrorism's threat is to lock down the weapons at the source, Allison recommends nothing less than a new international order based on no insecure nuclear material, no new facilities for processing uranium or enriching plutonium and no new nuclear states.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror Anonymous (July 2004) The war on terror has created near unanimity on many points, at least within the American press and political leadership. One essential point of agreement: al Qaeda specifically and radical Islamism in general are stirred by a hatred of modernity. Or as President George W. Bush has articulated repeatedly, they hate freedom. Nonsense, responds the nameless author of this work and 2003's Through Our Enemies' Eyes (the senior U.S. intelligence official's identity became an open secret by publication date). Indeed, he grimly and methodically discards common wisdom throughout this scathing and compelling take on counterterrorism. Imperial Hubris is not a book that will cheer Americans, regardless of their perspectives on the post-9/11 environment. We are, the author notes, losing the war on terror. Hawks will squirm as the author heaps contempt on U.S. missions in Afghanistan (too little, too late) and Iraq ("a sham causing more instability than it prevents"), but opponents of Bush administration policies may blanch at Anonymous' suggestion that what's needed is for the West to "proceed with relentless, brutal, and, yes, blood-soaked offensive military actions until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us."
A Portrait of Egypt : A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam Mary Anne Weaver (August 2000) Weaver, a New Yorker correspondent, is a gifted writer and observer who has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to understand the complex culture of Egypt and its effects on the entire Islamic world. She conveys the huge gap between Egypt's rich and poor and explains the appeal of political Islam in its many forms (some more radical than others) to the disenfranchised masses. Weaver believes that if Egypt turns "Islamist" in the way that Iran did in 1979, the effects will be much more dramatic throughout the Islamic world. She explains how the new generation of violent Islamic militants active throughout the world is largely the creation of U.S. policy: when the CIA covertly supported the mujahideen who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, it armed, trained and funded those who would become the most implacable enemies of the U.S. Weaver excels at explaining how, even as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak cracks down on domestic Islamic opposition, the mullahs are gaining control of Egypt's judiciary and educational system. Her interviews with Mubarak, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (the spiritual mentor of the World Trade Center bombers and, earlier, of some people involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat) and Naguib Mahfouz are riveting.
Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror Jason Burke (September 2003) Award-winning reporter Jason Burke shows how the threat from Islamic terrorism comes not from a single criminal mastermind, or even from one group. In this revealing account, he characterizes it is a broad movement with profound roots in the politics, societies and history of the Islamic world. Using hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Burke shows how "Al-Qaeda" is a convenient label applied misleadingly to a diverse, disorganized global movement dedicated to fighting a "cosmic battle" with the West. This is the definitive account of the mysterious organization, retelling its story from scratch and challenging many myths that threaten the very foundations of the "War on Terror."
Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America Anonymous (February 2003) Written by an anonymous member of the U.S. intelligence community using sources previously unexploited. In order to win the war against terrorism, the author argues that we must first stop dismissing militant Muslims as "extremists" or "religious fanatics." Formulating a successful military strategy requires that we must see the enemy as they perceive themselves—highly trained and motivated soldiers who fervently believe their cause is righteous. The author describes how militants throughout the Islamic world are enraged by what they believe is Western aggression against their people, religion, and culture. Though bin Laden declared war on America years ago—not once but twice—the author argues that American complacence in the face of such violent threats stems from the increasing secularization and moral relativism of American society and culture. Even if bin Laden is brought to justice, the author warns, the dangers posed by radical Islamic militants will not disappear, and we must be prepared for a protracted war against terrorism.
The Age of Sacred Terror : Radical Islam's War Against America Steven Simon, Dan Benjamin (October 2003) From two of the world's foremost experts on the new terrorism comes the definitive book on the rise of al-Qaeda and America's efforts to combat the most innovative and dangerous terrorist group ever. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon trace the growth of radical Islam from its medieval origins and, drawing on their years of counter-terrorism work at the National Security Council, provide essential insights into the thinking of Osama bin Laden and his followers. With unique authority, they analyze why America was unable to defend itself against this revolutionary threat on September 11, 2001, why bin Laden's apocalyptic creed is gaining ground in the Islamic world, and what the United States must do to stop the new terror.
The Future of Political Islam Graham E. Fuller Fuller, a former vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, sets out to de-mystify Islam and its relationship to affairs of state in this broad survey of Islamic political movements. Attributing the rise of militant and fundamentalist Islam to centuries of Western colonialism, imperialism and cultural domination, Fuller points out that in most Middle Eastern countries, politicized Islam is often the only alternative to repressive, authoritarian regimes. This sweeping survey of trends in the Muslim world contends that the issue is not whether Islam plays a central role in politics, but what Muslims want. To focus on radicalism and extremism blinds us from another trend: liberal political Islam. Proponents of liberal political Islam emphasize human rights and democracy, tolerance and cooperation. They face an uphill struggle as authoritarian regimes oppress opposition and use Islam to justify their undemocratic rule. As people are denied avenues to participate and criticize, as secular ideologies have failed, religion has come to play a central role in politics. The outcome of the struggle between extremists and liberals will determine the future of political Islam.
Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam Mark Huband (October 1999) In Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam, former Financial Times Middle East correspondent Mark Huband seeks to explain the history, politics, and reality of political Islam on the ground, in countries as diverse as Morocco and Afghanistan. Huband reports on the major upheavals of the past decade i