And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitability—far from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the region’s staunchest western ally.In America’s Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East. Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station. The two Roosevelts joined combined forces with Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. Yet they were also fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the "Great Game," the nineteenth-century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. Despite their good intentions, these "Arabists" propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. Their efforts, and ultimate failure, would shape the course of U.S. Middle Eastern relations for decades to come.Based on a vast array of declassified government records, private papers, and personal interviews, America’s Great Game tells the riveting story of the merry band of CIA officers whose spy games forever changed U.S. foreign policy.

    In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomoc, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil.In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism. This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report. This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report.

    As Europe's colonial powers withdrew, dozens of new states were launched amid much jubilation and to the world's applause. African leaders stepped forward with energy and enthusiasm to tackle the problems of development and nation-building, boldly proclaiming their hopes of establishing new societies that might offer inspiration to the world at large. The circumstances seemed auspicious. Independence came in the midst of an economic boom. On the world stage, African states excited the attention of the world's rival power blocs; in the Cold War era, the position that each newly independent state adopted in its relations with the West or the East was viewed as a matter of crucial importance. Africa was considered too valuable a prize to lose." "Today, Africa is spoken of only in pessimistic terms. The sum of its misfortunes - its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts - is truly daunting. No other area of the world arouses such a sense of foreboding. Few states have managed to escape the downward spiral: Botswana stands out as a unique example of an enduring multi-party democracy; South Africa, after narrowly avoiding revolution, has emerged in the post-apartheid era as a well-managed democratic state. But most African countries are effectively bankrupt, prone to civil strife, subject to dictatorial rule, weighted down by debt, and heavily dependent on Western assistance for survival." "So what went wrong? What happened to this vast continent, so rich in resources, culture and history, to bring it so close to destitution and despair in the space of two generations?" Focusing on the key personalities, events and themes of the independence era, Martin Meredith's narrative history seeks to explore and explain the myriad problems that Africa has faced in the past half-century, and faces still. The Fate of Africa is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how it came to this — and what, if anything, is to be done.

    It was a revolution as swift as it was explosive. For eighteen days, anger, defiance, and resurgent national pride reigned in the streets---protestors of all ages struck back against police and state security, united toward the common goal of liberation. But the revolution was more than a spontaneous uprising. It was the end result of years of mounting tension, brought on by a state that shamelessly abused its authority, rigging elections, silencing opposition, and violently attacking its citizens. When revolution bloomed in the region in January 2011, Egypt was a country whose patience had expired---with a people suddenly primed for liberation. As a journalist based in Cairo, Ashraf Khalil was an eyewitness to the perfect storm that brought down Mubarak and his regime. Khalil was subjected to tear gas alongside protestors in Tahrir Square, barely escaped an enraged mob, and witnessed the day-to-day developments from the frontlines. From the halls of power to the back alleys of Cairo, he offers a one-of-a-kind look at a nation in the throes of an uprising. Liberation Square is a revealing and dramatic look at the revolution that transformed the modern history of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

    This is the untold story of how Israel fought back with an elite force of undercover operatives, drawn from the nation’s diverse backgrounds and ethnicities—and united in their ability to walk among the enemy as no one else dared.Beginning in late 2000, as black smoke rose from burning tires and rioters threw rocks in the streets, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Arafat’s Palestinian Authority embarked on a strategy of sending their terrorists to slip undetected into Israel’s towns and cities to set the country ablaze, unleashing suicide attacks at bus stops, discos, pizzerias—wherever people gathered.But Israel fielded some of the most capable and cunning special operations forces in the world. The Ya’mas, Israel National Police Border Guard undercover counterrorists special operations units became Israel’s eyes-on-target response. Launched on intelligence provided by the Shin Bet, indigenous Arabic-speaking Dovrim, or “Speakers,” operating in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza infiltrated the treacherous confines where the terrorists lived hidden in plain sight, and set the stage for the intrepid tactical specialists who often found themselves under fire and outnumbered in their effort to apprehend those responsible for the carnage inside Israel. This is their compelling true story: a tale of daring and deception that could happen only in the powder keg of the modern Middle East.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS AND A MAP

    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 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 richer in 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.

    Within a year, the American merchant ship "Betsey" was captured by Sallee Rovers, state-sponsored pirates operating out of the ports of Morocco. Algerian pirates quickly seized two more American ships: the boats were confiscated, their crews held captive, and ransom demanded of the fledging American government. The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Mediterranean runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison; the adoption of the Constitution; the Quasi-War with France and the War of 1812; the construction of a full-time professional navy; and, most important, the nation's haltering steps toward commercial independence. Frank Lambert's genius is to see in the Barbary Wars the ideal means of capturing the new nation's shaky emergence in the complex context of the Atlantic world. Depicting a time when Britain ruled the seas and France most of Europe, "The Barbary Wars" proves America's earliest conflict with the Arabic world was always a struggle for economic advantage rather than any clash of cultures or religions.

     You may think you know what the "war on terror" is. But to know it truly, you must read this book. Suskind has written a riveting work of narrative nonfiction, filled with exclusive, historically significant disclosures that will echo across America and the world. What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? The One Percent Doctrine is the deeply secretive core of America's real playbook: a default strategy, designed by Dick Cheney, that separates America from its moorings, and has driven everything -- from war in Afghanistan to war in Iraq to the global search for jihadists.The story begins on September 12, 2001, the day America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Ultimately, that reply would shape the nation's very character.Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key actors -- the notables, from the President and Vice President to George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, who oversee the "war on terror" and report progress to an anxious nation; and the invisibles, the men and women just below the line of sight, left to improvise plans to defeat a new kind of enemy in an hour-by-hour race against disaster. The internal battles between these two teams -- one, under the hot lights; the other, actually fighting the fight -- reveal everything about what America faces, and what it has done, in this age of terror.Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? Is there an operational cell, armed with WMDs, inside the United States? Have some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- including leaders of al Qaeda -- been caught and accidentally released? Can America prevail in this struggle against enemies who are patient, ingenious, certain, and have clear tactical advantage?With his unparalleled access to senior officials, past and present, Ron Suskind -- author of The Price of Loyalty, the most revealing book yet written on the Bush administration -- finally answers the questions that keep Americans awake at night. And in this startling book, he reframes the debates that roil the globe.

    It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria Nikolaos van Dam explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Assad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to the rise and expansion of ISIS. Through an in-depth examination of the role of sectarian, regional and tribal loyalties in Syria, van Dam traces political developments within the Assad regime and the military and civilian power elite from the Arab Spring to the present day.

    Dreams and Shadows is an extraordinary tour de horizon of the new Middle East, with on-the-ground reportage of the ideas and movements driving change across the region--and the obstacles they confront.

    Indeed, his vision of modern warfare powerfully influenced America'sdecision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement the Surge, now recognized as a dramatic success. In The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us on the ground to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the big global war (the War on Terrorism) and its relation to the associated small wars across theglobe: Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Pakistani tribal zones, East Timor and the horn of Africa. Kilcullen sees today's conflicts as a complex interweaving of contrasting trends--local insurgencies seeking autonomy caught up in a broader pan-Islamic campaign--small wars in the midst ofa big one. He warns that America's actions in the war on terrorism have tended to conflate these trends, blurring the distinction between local and global struggles and thus enormously complicating our challenges. Indeed, the US had done a poor job of applying different tactics to these verydifferent situations, continually misidentifying insurgents with limited aims and legitimate grievances--whom he calls accidental guerrillas--as part of a coordinated worldwide terror network. We must learn how to disentangle these strands, develop strategies that deal with global threats, avoidlocal conflicts where possible, and win them where necessary. Colored with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the jungles and highlands of Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East, The Accidental Guerrilla will, quite simply, change the way we think about war. This book is amust read for everyone concerned about the war on terror.

    When a scholar as careful and learned as Mr. Kennedy is prompted by contemporary issues to reexamine the great processes of the past, the result can only be an enhancement of our historical understanding.... When the study is written as simply and attractively as this work is, its publication may have a great and beneficient impact. It is to be hoped that Mr. Kennedy's will have one, at a potentially decisive moment in America's history."Michael Howard, The New York Times Book Review"Important, learned, and lucid... Paul Kennedy's great achievement is that he makes us see our current international problems against a background of empires that have gone under because they were unaible to sustain the material cost of greatness; and he does so in a universal historical perspective of which Ranke would surely have approved."James Joll, The New York Review of Books"His strategic-economic approach provides him with the context for a shapely narrative....Professor Kennedy not only exploits his framework eloquently, he also makes use of it to dig deeper and explore the historical contexts in which some 'power centers' prospered....But the most commanding purpose of his project...is the lesson he draws from 15 centuries of statecraft to apply to the present scene....[The book's] final section is for everyone concerned with the contemporary political scene."Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times"Kennedy gives epic meaning to the nation's relative economic and industrial decline." Newsweek

    From the coast of Southern Europe to Morocco and the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met in bustling ports to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods and slaves - raiding as far as Iceland and New England in search of their human currency. Studying the origins of these men, their culture and practices - from pirate etiquette to intimidation tactics - Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsairs in fascinating detail, and uncovers a truly remarkable clash of civilisations.Pirates of Barbary draws on an incredible wealth of material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent Islamic accounts to provide a new perspective on the corsairs, both as criminals and as devout warriors engaged in a battle against European incursions. The result is a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time, and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain, and so alien that it set you apart from the rest of mankind.

    Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States.In a cogent analysis of why the United States is losing ground as a world power and what it can do to reverse the trend, War by Other Means describes the statecraft of geoeconomics: the use of economic instruments to achieve geopolitical goals. Geoeconomics has long been a lever of America’s foreign policy. But factors ranging from U.S. bureaucratic politics to theories separating economics from foreign policy leave America ill prepared for this new era of geoeconomic contest, while rising powers, especially China, are adapting rapidly. The rules-based system Americans set in place after World War II benefited the United States for decades, but now, as the system frays and global competitors take advantage, America is uniquely self-constrained. Its geoeconomic policies are hampered by neglect and resistance, leaving the United States overly reliant on traditional military force.Drawing on immense scholarship and government experience, Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris show that if America’s policies are left uncorrected, the price in American blood and treasure will only grow. What geoeconomic warfare requires is a new vision of U.S. statecraft.

    If you've never had to survive on an income so small, it is hard to imagine. How would you put food on the table, afford a home, and educate your children? How would you handle emergencies and old age? Every day, more than a billion people around the world must answer these questions. Portfolios of the Poor is the first book to systematically explain how the poor find solutions to their everyday financial problems.The authors conducted year-long interviews with impoverished villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa--records that track penny by penny how specific households manage their money. The stories of these families are often surprising and inspiring. Most poor households do not live hand to mouth, spending what they earn in a desperate bid to keep afloat. Instead, they employ financial tools, many linked to informal networks and family ties. They push money into savings for reserves, squeeze money out of creditors whenever possible, run sophisticated savings clubs, and use microfinancing wherever available. Their experiences reveal new methods to fight poverty and ways to envision the next generation of banks for the "bottom billion."Indispensable for those in development studies, economics, and microfinance, Portfolios of the Poor will appeal to anyone interested in knowing more about poverty and what can be done about it.