Architect of global Jihad

the life of Al-Qaida strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri

With more than 35 years experience of jihadist activism, Abu Mus'ab al- Suri remains the foremost theoretician in the global jihadist movement today, despite his capture in Pakistan in late 2005. After having participated in the founding of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1988, al- ...

Turkey

from Empire to revolutionary Republic: the emergence of the turkish nation from 1789 to present

Sina Ak-in is one of Turkey's most important historians, and published in 1996 the Turkish version of this book, which has already gone into several editions. It was inspired by the author's conviction that in Turkey itself the teaching of 20th-century Turkish history ...

Realm of the Black Mountain

a history of Montenegro

Montenegro was admitted to the UN as its 192nd member in June 2006, thus recovering the independence it had lost nearly 90 years earlier at the Versailles Peace Conference. This is the first full-length history of the country in English for a century, traces the ...

Cultures of confinement

a history of the prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Prisons, it seems, are on the increase everywhere, from democratic Britain to communist China, as ever larger proportions of humanity find themselves behind bars. While prisons now span the world, we know little about their history in global perspective. Rather than interpreting the prison everywhere ...

Oil and politics in the gulf of Guinea

This book investigates the paradox at the heart of present-day Gulf of Guinea politics. The governance crisis festering throughout every one of the region's states ought to discourage outsiders from capital- intensive, long-term commercial involvement and cast doubts over the political survival of ruling ...

Elusive compromise

a history of interwar Yugoslavia

Before Tito's Yugoslavia, which disintegrated violently in the 1990s, there was another Yugoslav state. This book is about the original, interwar Yugoslavia (1918-41), and is based on the author's research in Croatian, Serbian, British and American archives and on extensive study of published ...

Angola

the weight of history

It is hoped that the multiparty elections of 2007 will bring about a political system in Angola that will ensure the country's sustained economic and social development. Angola is just emerging from almost three decades of civil war, and its abundant natural resources and ...

Empire of the mind

a history of Iran

Empire of the Mind tells the story of Iranian history from the earliest times up to the present day, from before the Achaemenids through to the Islamic Republic. It highlights the uniqueness of Iranian identity as one of the oldest continuing civilisations in the world ...

Islam and the abolition of slavery

Drawing on examples from the "abode of Islam", from the Philippines to Sengal and from the Caucasus to South Africa, the author ranges across the history of Islam, focusing on the late 18th century to the early 21st century.

Sri Lanka in the modern age

a history of contested identities

INDEX: Pre-independence years : changing lives. Colonial encounters.Colonialism and constructed identities.National framings : authentic bodies and things.Before independence : communities and conflicts.The post-independence years : political cultures.Citizens, communities, rights, constitutions, 1947-2000.The search for equality : the left movement and insurrections.The search for sovereignty ...

Remaking israeli judaism

the challenge of Shas

"Remaking Israeli Judaism" is the first comprehensive account of Shas, the most significant religious and cultural movement to have emerged in Israel since the rise of Likud in 1977. Shas brings together in an explosive mixture the religious and ethnic tensions which continue to simmer ...

Sarajevo

a biography

Indelibly marked as the site of the assassination of Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984, but by 1992 was a city at war, its residents subjected to what became the longest urban siege of the modern era. Sarajevans ...

Confronting Iran

the failure of american foreign policy and the roots of mistrust

The Islamic Republic of Iran´s ongoing nuclear programme has provoked a major and menacing crisis in its relations with the US and the other Western powers. Ali Ansari, a briton of iranian origin, argues that the crisis is a symptom of broader, long-term fissures ...

Civil War is not a stupid thing

accounting for violence in developing countries

Why is there so much violence in the developing countries? What does it have to do with economic development? What does it have to do with globalisation? In addressing these and other questions, Christopher Cramer takes a broad comparative approach, from recent wars, insurgencies and ...

Iraq in fragments

the occupation and its legacy

When the US led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish a prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region. It sought to engage Iraqi society in ways that ...

The armenians

from kings and priests to merchants and commissars

The book traces the evolution of Armenia and Armenian collective identity, in the homeland and in the diaspora, from its beginnings to the eve of the Armenian nationalist movement over Gharabagh in 1988. The emphasis is on the modern era - the seventeenth century onwards, including ...

Theft of a nation

Romania since communism

Kosova express

a journey in wartime

Darfur

the ambiguous genocide

In mid-2004 the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan forced itself on to the centre stage of world affairs. A formerly obscure 'tribal conflict' in the heart of Africa has escalated into what could be the first genocide of the twenty-first century. Its characteristics - Arabism, Islamism ...

Saudi Arabia in the balance

political economy, sciety, foreign affairs

Heightened fears of terrorism, surging oil prices, and an unsettled Middle East have meant that Saudi Arabia has once again become the focus of international concern. The accession of King Abdullah in 2005 comes at a key moment in the country's history. The tensions ...