The future of the relationship between Israel and America is deeply uncertain: the current political leadership of both countries is hostile to the other, there is no longer a sense of shared strategic focus, and demographic changes are forcing the countries further apart with every passing year.Undermining the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is the fact that it was never clearly defined. The ambiguity has been politically helpful, but now threatens the future: there is no...

**“A comprehensive, even magisterial review . . . This is strong stuff, but Simon does not flinch.” —Foreign AffairsA longtime American foreign policy insider’s penetrating and definitive reckoning with this country’s involvement in the Middle East**The culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engageme...

**“A comprehensive, even magisterial review . . . This is strong stuff, but Simon does not flinch.” —Foreign AffairsA longtime American foreign policy insider’s penetrating and definitive reckoning with this country’s involvement in the Middle East**The culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engageme...

Big ideas matter in politics, and they spark fierce debates about the future of our society. This pathbreaking new textbook examines the key political ideas that shape our lives today.Political Theory: Why Big Ideas Matter takes a unique disruptive approach by creating conversations between two or three important thinkers, within multiple cultural contexts and perspectives to show innovative connections between thinkers across time and space. Rather than drawing solely fro...

The authors of the bestseller The Age of Sacred Terror show how the United States is losing the war on terror and what we need to do if we're serious about winning it.We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the "war on terror." In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack.In this provocative new book, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon show how the terrorist threa...

There have been five central crises in America's post World War II encounter with the Middle East, and the Obama administration now faces a sixth. Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability, and the prospect of Israel launching air strikes to stop it, are ingredients for a conflict that could ruin any residual hopes for fostering peace in the region. The Sixth Crisis explores the fraught linkages between the Iranian nuclear challenge, the increasing likelihood of an Israe...

A bold reexamination of U.S. influence in the Middle East during the Cold War.The Arab Spring, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Iraq war, and the Syrian civil war—these contemporary conflicts have deep roots in the Middle East’s postwar emergence from colonialism.In The Pragmatic Superpower, foreign policy experts Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon reframe the legacy of U.S. involvement in the Arab world from 1945 to 1991 and shed new light on the makings of...

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon began working on this book shortly after leaving the National Security Council, where, as director and senior director for counterterrorism, they watched the rise of al-Qaeda and helped coordinate America’s fight against Usama bin Laden and his organization. They warned in articles and interviews about the appearance of a new breed of terrorists who were determined to kill on the grand scale. More than a year before September 11, 2001, they began writing

In the spirit of Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of OZ, this story introduces readers to the magical hidden, and mysterious, world of gnomes, elves and trolls. Sarah, an 11-year old, moves with her family from New York City to rural Hadley, Connecticut. She's eager to explore her new home and meet new friends but she never expected to befriend an old garden gnome. Readers join Sarah as she is drawn into a secret world under our feet. Sarah uses her instincts to calm old rivalries and he...

Thousands of years ago, Herodotus and Plutarch immortalized Spartan society in their histories; but today, little is left of the ancient city or the social structure of this momentous culture. One of the few antiquarian marks of the civilization that has survived lies scores of miles away from Sparta, at a narrow Greek mountain pass called Thermopylae.It was there that three hundred of Sparta's finest warriors held back the invading millions of the Persian empire and valiantly gave...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings papers from the 8th International Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computing Systems, PMBS 2017, held in Denver, Colorado, USA, in November 2017.The 10 full papers and 3 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: performance evaluation and analysis; performance modeling and simulation; and ...

36 Disturbing True Crime Stories of Murder and DeceptionReaders Love This Series - Over 7,000 Five-Star RatingsThree Book Collection: Volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the True Crime Case Histories Series (2022)If you’re a fan of true crime, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the big-name cases; Ted Bundy, BTK, David Berkowitz, Christopher Watts, Diane Downs, Casey Anthony, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jodi Arias, Ed Gein, etc. The lis...