mideast polisci

Hardcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 318 pages. As the architect of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini remains one of the most inspirational and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. The revolution placed Iran at the forefront of Middle East politics and of the Islamic revival. Twenty years after his death, Khomeini is revered as a spiritual and political figurehead in Iran and in large swathes of the Islamic world, while in the West he is remembered by many as a dictator and as the instigator of Islamist confrontation. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam brings together both distinguished and emerging scholars in this comprehensive volume, which covers all aspects of Khomeini's life and critically examines Khomeini the politician, the philosopher, and the spiritual leader. The book details Khomeini's early years in exile from Iran, the revolution itself, and events that took place thereafter including the hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq war. Lastly, the book considers his legacy in Iran - where Khomeini's image has been used by both reformist and conservative politicians to develop their own agendas - and further afield in other parts of the Islamic world and in the West. Written by scholars from varying disciplinary backgrounds, the book will prove invaluable to students and general readers interested in the life and times of Khomeini and the politics of Islam that he inspired.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 226 pages. Gilt title on spine. Clean inside and out. From the dust jacket: "...in its decision to invade Iraq, the Bush administration failed in its stewardship of American Foreign policy." Clean copy.

Softcover. London, IB Tauris, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 418 pages. Ali Shariati is, for many, the ideological father of the Iranian revolution. A charismatic leader and teacher, his radical blend of Islam and Marxism mobilized a whole generation of young Iranians. This full-length political biography looks at Ali Shariati's life and thought in the context of the complex and contradictory cultural, social and political conditions of the Iranian society that shaped him. Clean copy.

Softcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 1st Edition, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 480 pages. Softcover. Wrapper very good, french flaps, small bump to bottom of spine (see image). Pages clean. Binding good. Examines the nature and evolution of ruling bargains, the political systems to which they gave rise, the steady unraveling of the old systems and the structural consequences thereof, and the uprisings that have engulfed much of the Middle East since Dec. 2010.

Softcover. New York University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 349 pages. An in depth and scholarly report on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an essential actor on behalf of modern-day Kurds. The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq. Clean copy.

Softcover. Istanbul, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 143 pages. Contents: 1. B. Beckman, Explaining democratization, notes on the concept of civil society. 2. I. Sunar, Civil society and Islam 3. S.J. Al-Azm, Is Islam secularizable. 4. B. Tibi, The cultural underpinning of civil society in Islamic civilization: Islam and democracy - bridges between the civilizations. 5. S.E. Ibrahim, From Taliban to Erbakan, The case of Islam, civil society and democracy.6. G. Therborn, Beyond civil society: Democratic experiences and their relevance to the "Middle East". 7. M. Sariolghalam, Prospects for civil society in the Middle East: An analysis of cultural impediments. 8. L. Koker, National identity and state legitimacy: Contradictions of Turkey's democratic experience. 9. E. Ozdalga, Civil society and its enemies: Reflections on a debate in the light of recent developments within the Islamic student movement in Turkey. 10. E. Ozbudun, Civil society and democratic consolidation in Turkey. 11. A. Lundgren, The European Union as a democracy-promoter. 12. I. Brandell, Labour, civil society and democratization in North Africa. 13. O. Tornquist, Civil society and divisive politicisation: experiences from popular efforts at democratisation in Indonesia. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 2nd pr., 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 496 pages. During the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines-nationalist, Marxist, and religious-and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of post-independence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, IB Tauris, 1st pbk, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 314 pages, color and b&w illustrations. In this first biography of Alexander Griboyedov in English, Laurence Kelly paints a vivid picture of a man of remarkable literary talent and diplomatic gifts that were nevertheless overshadowed by ill-fortune. Involved in the 1825 Decembrist plot to overthrow the Tsarist state and the mission to further Russia's expansionist agenda in the Caucasus, the famous writer was eventually murdered by zealous mobs in Tehran. This book makes an invaluable contribution to the diplomatic history of Russia, the Caucasus and Iran at the same time illuminating the life and works of a writer who was among nineteenth-century Russia's most respected and prominent writers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spine, 297 pages. Focusing on the family and career of the prominent Egyptian politician Sayed Bey Marei, Robert Springborg provides in this volume a political ethnography on the changing roles of the family and other social units in Egypt's political economy. He traces the rise to power of the rural nobility from the late nineteenth century, demonstrating how members of this class used family, regional, patron-client, and small-group loyalties to maintain and enhance their powers and privileges under the regimes of Nasser and Sadat. In this context the author also investigates the complexities between provincial and national politics, and between the bureaucratic/technocratic elite and the political elite of the country. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk., 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 257 pages, b&w illustrations. In this path-breaking and multi-layered account of one of the least explored societies in the Middle East, Nelida Fuccaro examines the political and social life of the Gulf city and its coastline, as exemplified by Manama in Bahrain. Written as an ethnography of space, politics and community, it addresses the changing relationship between urban development, politics and society before and after the discovery of oil. By using a variety of local sources and oral histories, Fuccaro questions the role played by the British Empire and oil in state-making. Instead, she draws attention to urban residents, elites and institutions as active participants in state and nation building. She also examines how the city has continued to provide a source of political, social and sectarian identity since the early nineteenth century, challenging the view that the advent of oil and modernity represented a radical break in the urban past of the region. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spine, 494 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2nd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in green cloth covers, 188 pages, b&w illustrations. In this provocative examination of collective identity in Jordan, Linda Layne challenges long-held Western assumptions that Arabs belong to easily recognizable corporate social groups. Who is a "true" Jordanian? Who is a "true" Bedouin? These questions, according to Layne, are examples of a kind of pigeonholing that has distorted the reality of Jordanian national politics. In developing an alternate approach, she shows that the fluid social identities of Jordan emerge from an ongoing dialogue among tribespeople, members of the intelligentsia Hashemite rulers, and Western social scientists. Many commentators on social identity in the Middle East limit their studies to the village level, but Layne's goal is to discover how the identity-building processes of the locality and of the nation condition each other. She finds that the tribes creates their own cultural "homes" through a dialogue with official nationalist rhetoric and Jordanian urbanites, while King Hussein, in turn, maintains the idea of the "homeland" in many ways that are powerfully influenced by the tribespeople. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Mizan Press, 1st pbk., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 460 pages. This unprecedented collection in English of notable works by Imam Khomeini, ranging in date from 1941 to 1980, makes it possible for non-Iranians to become directly acquainted with hsi ideas and to examine the convictions that underlay his indomitable mien. He was undeniably one of the most important figures of the age, not only for his roles as principle strategist of a successful revolutionary movement and supervisor of the Islamic order it ushered in, but also for his unhesitating promotion of what he saw as a global Islamic mission -- the union of all Muslim peoples. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 350 pages. Describes Israel's use of spies in Lebanon during the seventies, the secret relations between Israel and Jordan, and U.S. secret channels to the PLO. Posner focuses on violence and terrorism employed by the Palestinians in their quest for nationhood, and on inter-communal violence in the Middle East in general and more specifically in Lebanon. He treats the little-known Circassion community in Jordan, that community's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Sadat peace initiative, and the role of the United States in seeking a peaceful resolution of the civil war in Lebanon. A good book to gain a perspective on contemporary diplomacy and Middle East politics. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 288 pages, map illustration. Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-277) and index. Subjects: To 1917; Jewish-Arab relations History To 1917; Jews Colonization Palestine; Labor Zionism Palestine; Land settlement Palestine; Palestine Social conditions; Palestine History 1799-1917. Name, date on front fly leaf otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 723 pages. During his long reign (1953-1999), King Hussein of Jordan was one of the most dominant figures in Middle Eastern politics and a consistent proponent of peace with Israel. This is the first major account of his life, written with access to his official documents and with the cooperation (but not approval) of his family and staff, and also extensive interviews with international policy makers. For more than forty years, Hussein walked a tightrope between the Palestinians and Arab radicals on the one hand and Israel on the other. Avi Shlaim reveals that, for the sake of dynastic and national survival, Hussein initiated a secret dialogue with Israel in 1963 that encompassed more than one thousand hours with Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, and countless others. Shlaim reconstructs this dialogue across battle lines from previously untapped Israeli records and the firsthand accounts of key participants, and makes clear that it was Israeli intransigence that was largely responsible for the failure to achieve a peaceful settlement between 1967 and 1994. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hurst and Co., 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 169 pages. In mid-2012 the previously almost forgotten Syrian Kurds suddenly emerged as a potential game-changer in the country's civil war when in an attempt to consolidate its increasingly desperate position the Assad government abruptly withdrew its troops from the major Kurdish areas in Syria. The Kurds in Syria had suddenly won autonomy, a situation that has huge implications for neighboring Turkey and the near independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Indeed, their precipitous rise may prove a tipping-point that alters the boundaries imposed on the Middle East by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. These important events and what they portend for the future are scrutinized by the renowned scholar of the Kurds Michael Gunter. He also analyses the sudden rise of Salih Muslim and his Democratic Union Party (PYD) - which was created by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and remains affiliated to it - and the extremely complex and deadly fighting between factions of the Syrian Opposition affiliated with al-Qaeda such as the Jabhat al-Nusra jihadists and the PYD, among others. Clean copy.

Softcover. Costa Mesa CA, Mazda Publishers, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 134 pages. The history of Iran is a subject attracting increasing interest, and in it the history of the Qajar period, here dated 1796-1925, occupies a pivotal transitional place. The Qajar rulers reunited Iran after a century of weakness and division, and helped create modern Iran and its response to western power. Although the Qajars were not great reformers, their period saw the development of many new trends of thought, ranging from new religious ideas and groups to the adapting of modern ideas to Iranian circumstances. This book covers intellectual trends and equally it covers the political and socioeconomic history of Iran, including the growth of western incursions and control, which led to social, economic, and political disruptions and helped lead to a major revolution that gave Iran a modern constitution. Later developments culminated in a modernizing central government under the Pahlavi shahs. The period 1796-1925 saw a flowering of Iran's visual arts, politically oriented literature, popular culture, and crafts and carpets, and the beginnings of photography and film. The book interprets all these developments as part of a readable and comprehensible history of a period that helped bring Iran into the modern world while continuing its cultural greatness. Clean copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 273 pages. From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an "empire of critique" from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia. With this book, Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia. Clean copy.

Softcover. Santa Monica CA, RAND Corporation, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 382 pages, color and b&w illustrations. For years the government of Yemen has conducted military operations north of the capital against groups of its citizens known as "Huthis." In spite of using all means at its disposal, the government has been unable to subdue the Huthi movement. This book presents an in-depth look at the conflict in all its aspects. The authors detail the various stages of the conflict and map out its possible future trajectories. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st pbk., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 232 pages, b&w illustrations. Focusing on the immediate pre-revolutionary period and the first decade of the Islamic Republic, Bayat discusses the economic and political strategies of 'ordinary'[Iranian] people, mainly in Tehran.... He demonstrates that, for these people at least, the populist revolution did not bring about the changes that they needed or wanted. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse NY, Syracuse University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, off-white cloth with black lettering, 253 pages. This volume contains a comprehensive examination of the crucial first ten years of the Arab League and of the continuing dilemma it faces in juggling opposing local and regional interests. Clean copy.

Softcover. Hanover NH, Brandeis University Press , reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, 228 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. The Dead Sea is unlike any other place on earth. Situated a quarter mile below sea level, so saline it can't support life, surrounded by a desolate landscape, it is not just a geologic feature but a source of mystery connected to religious faith. In elegant and vivid prose, Barbara Kreiger re-creates and analyzes the myths and legends surrounding the site and examines both its natural history and its gradual and difficult exploration. But The Dead Sea (first published as Living Waters in 1988) is more than a detailed and delightful travelogue. It is also an inquiry into the human and political drama that has swirled around this mysterious place for more than 12,000 years. In an afterword to the new edition, Kreiger shows how the sea in the post-Peace Accord era may come to take on a new symbolism: with perpetual need for water and a thriving mineral industry as common bonds, Israel and Jordan, two traditional antagonists whose border bisects the sea, may find themselves joining forces to preserve its fragile ecosystem against the threats of technology and tourism. Tan stain to top corner of text b;ock, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Princeton University Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 475 pages. A balance sheet of thirty years of revolutionary experiment, this work is a comprehensive analysis of the failure of the socialist transformation of Egypt during the regimes of Nasser and Sadat. Testing recent theories of the nature of the developing states and their relation both to indigenous class forces and to external pressures from advanced industrial societies, John Waterbury describes the limited but complex choices available to Egyptian policy-makers in their attempts to reconcile the goals of reform and capital accumulation. Clean copy.