Bringing together specialists from the fields of international relations, history and politics, this work attempts to answer three main questions regarding the 20th century. It considers what the century's salient characteristics have been, what else is ending as the century ends, and whether Churchill was right in calling it a ""disappointing century.""
As the contributors address these issues, they also discuss whether it has been an American century or a ""nuclear"" century, and whether it marks the ""end of history,"" the triumph of Western liberalism, or merely the end of the Cold...

How do we engage with the pressing challenges of xenophobia, radicalism and security in the age of the ""war on terror""? The widely felt sense of insecurity in the West is shared by Muslims both within and outside Western societies. Growing Islamic militancy and resulting increased security measures by Western powers have contributed to a pervasive sense among Muslims of being under attack (both physically and culturally). Islam and Political Violence brings together the current debate on the uneasy and potentially mutually destructive relationship between the Muslim world and the...

Iranian ambitions in the Persian Gulf and rivalries with Arab neighbors are subject to intense - and heated - speculation, controversy and debate. Here, Farzad Cyrus Sharifi scrutinizes the rival Arab-Iranian claims to Bahrain, the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and the Abu Musa and Tunbs islands in the years after World War II and before the Iranian revolution. Through investigation of previously unexamined primary materials and interviews with leading players, this book sheds new light on the evolution and dynamics of hegemonic and nationalistic Arab-Iranian rivalries and how these rivalries began...