9/11 almost instantaneously remade American politics and foreign policy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, water boarding and Guantanamo are examples of its profound and far-reaching effects. But despite its monumental impact--and a deluge of books about al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism--no one has written a serious assessment of the man who planned it, Osama bin Laden. Available biographies depict bin Laden as an historical figure, the mastermind behind 9/11, but no longer...

9/11 almost instantaneously remade American politics and foreign policy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, water boarding and Guantanamo are examples of its profound and far-reaching effects. But despite its monumental impact--and a deluge of books about al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism--no one has written a serious assessment of the man who planned it, Osama bin Laden. Available biographies depict bin Laden as an historical figure, the mastermind behind 9/11, but no longer...

When Michael Scheuer first questioned the goals of the Iraq War in his 2004 bestseller Imperial Hubris, policymakers and ordinary citizens alike stood up and took notice. Now, Scheuer offers a scathing and frightening look at how the Iraq War has been a huge setback to America's War on Terror, making our enemy stronger and altering the geopolitical landscape in ways that are profoundly harmful to U.S. interests and security concerns.Marching Toward Hel...

It took a quarter-century of bad strategy, including more than a dozen years of Western air attacks and invasions in the Middle East, to bring the so-called "Islamic State" into existence. Can we somehow manage to avoid the well-trodden path of overreacting to the provocations of Islamist extremists?With the rise of ISIS, a new style of terrorism that publicly gloats over acts of extreme cruelty has reawakened the fears of the global audience. But in Don't Pani...

An updated edition of The Islamist Phoenix is now available as ISIS: The Terror Nation (978-1-60980-725-2)From its birth in the late 1990s as the jihadist dream of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Islamic State (known by a variety of names, including ISIS, ISIL, and al Qaeda in Iraq) has grown into a massive enterprise, redrawing national borders across the Middle East and subjecting an area larger than the United Kingdom to its own vici...

The New York Times bestseller: "Historically incisive, geographically broad-reaching, and brimming with illuminating anecdotes."—Max Rodenbeck, New York Review of BooksProfiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal

A political and personal odyssey from hatred to loveWhen Nonie Darwish was a girl of eight, her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. A high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza, he was considered a shahid,a martyr for jihad.Yet at an early age, Darwish developed a skeptical eye about her own Muslim culture and upbringing. Why the love of violence and hatred of Jews and Christians? Why the tolerance of glaring so...

When you keep repeating that the worst is about to happen, it finally does. The threat of terrorism has caught up with us. By invading Iraq in 2003 and not intervening in Syria since 2011, we have helped fuel radicalization. And we continue to fuel it, by making diplomatic compromises with dictators, by refusing to heed the suffering of populations, and by failing to invent counter-speech. What is the responsibility of our societies in the creation of these new jihadists? How are they mold...

In this provocative and timely book, Middle East expert Lee Smith overturns long-held Western myths and assumptions about the Arab world, offering advice for America’s future success in the region.Seeking the motivation behind the September 11 attacks, Smith moved to Cairo, where he discovered that the standard explanation—a clash of East and West—was simply not the case. Middle East conflicts have little to do with Israel, the United States, or the West in general, but are endemic...

"The most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam."—Salon.comThe first comprehensive account of America's misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism.Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, a...

In The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power , Professor As`ad AbuKhalil confronts the contradictory nature of Saudi Arabia—questions that both the Saudi government, long shrouded in mystery, and the United States government, ever protective of its own interests, seem unwilling to answer.In this unsparing probe into the history and power structure of the kingdom, Professor AbuKhalil, author of Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New "War on Terrorism", affor...

"Carsten Wieland plumbs the contradictions of contemporary Syrian life and politics. He was among the first Westerners... in the early years of Bashar's presidency... to interview Syrian opposition members as well as government officials. He explored the reasons that many young Syrians had such high expectations of their young president even as so many reviled the government and the Baath Party for its corruption and repression. Their expectations, we now know, were dashed. Wieland is even...