Megan Kate Nelson. Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. 400 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8203-3397-7; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-4251-1. In an attempt to reconceptualize the destruction caused by the American Civil War “as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change,” Megan Kate Read more
Continue ReadingThe month of August has been an eventful one for the Islamic world and the Middle East. Chang in that part of the world is happening so fast that the media could hardly keep pace with it. NAM member and observers states The crisis in Syria remains the top issue. Headlines about the conflict there Read more
Continue ReadingFour must read books: The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era. By Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren. Yale University Press; 350 pages; $28 and £18.99. The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. By Roger Owen. Harvard University Press; 248 pages; $24.95 and £18.95. The Syrian Read more
Continue Readingby Ahmed E. Souaiaia* Tunisian governing partners are engaged in a sterile debate over the form of government for the post authoritarian regime era. During its ninth congress, Ennahda threw its support behind a parliamentary system whereas leaders of other political parties prefer a modified presidential model. Subsequently, the interim government threatened to hold a Read more
Continue ReadingHeaven on Earth: a Journey Through Sharia Law, by Sadakat Kadri; 332pp, Bodley Head, t £16.99 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £18.99, ebook £9.99). In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a lecture called “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective”. The title sounded innocent enough, Read more
Continue ReadingThe Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, Revolution by Gregg L. Frazer; University Press of Kansas, 2012; 296 pp., $35. by GARY SCOTT SMITH The religious views of America’s founders have been fiercely contested in the public arena for many years. The principal battle is between those who claim that most founders were Read more
Continue ReadingBy Sarah Ruden Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, By Elaine Pagels, Viking, 246 pp., $27.95 The Book of Revelation is a jolt at the end of the New Testament: thrilling, baffling, or embarrassing to many Christians, shocking or laughable to many others. The monsters lumbering across its Read more
Continue ReadingThe End of Populism by Ahmed E. Souaiaia* The Arab Spring has provided scholars and analysts with a laboratory to observe radical social change. Tunisia and Egypt taught us about non-violent resistance and the power of the people to overcome regime repression. In Libya, we saw tribal, regional, national, and international actors whose interests intersected Read more
Continue ReadingThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; by MICHELLE ALEXANDER; The New Press, Paperback, $19.95. The New Jim Crow Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our Read more
Continue ReadingGeorge F. Kennan: An American Life, By John Lewis Gaddis, Penguin Press, 784 pp., $39.95 George Kennan was the J. Alfred Prufrock of American diplomacy—acutely observant, toxically self-absorbed, and to borrow T. S. Eliot’s words, “full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; / At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— / Almost, at times, the Read more
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