States are more likely to engage in risky and destabilizing actions such as military buildups and preemptive strikes if they believe their adversaries pose a tangible threat.
For the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being.
How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French RevolutionHistorians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers-that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment.
In the wide-ranging and innovative essays of Cultures in Motion, a dozen distinguished historians offer new conceptual vocabularies for understanding how cultures have trespassed across geography and social space.
The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the worldThis is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today.
Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries.
How civility has shaped and been shaped by historical and social forces, and why it is in danger todayCivility is desirable and possible, but can this fragile ideal be guaranteed?
A comprehensive look at the intellectual and cultural innovations of the Weimar periodDuring its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918-33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts.
A major intellectual biography of Toqueville that restores democracy in America to its essential contextMany American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat-as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself.
A history of partition seen through the life and fiction of one of the subcontinent's most important modern writersSaadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan.
An intimate look at war through the lives of soldiers and their families at Fort HoodMaking War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it.
The first collection of letters in English by one of the great writers of the twentieth centuryThis is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century.
With each day that passed after the 2003 invasion, the United States seemed to sink deeper in the treacherous quicksand of Iraq's social discord, floundering in the face of deep ethno-sectarian divisions that have impeded the creation of a viable state and the molding of a unified Iraqi identity.
A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man.
A deeply personal meditation on the haunting power of American photos and films of the 1940sWartime Kiss is a personal meditation on the haunting power of American photographs and films from World War II and the later 1940s.
A sweeping history of Islam and the West from the seventh century to todayEurope and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "e;clash of civilizations"e; between the Muslim world and Europe.
People still think of the Cold War as a simple two-sided conflict, a kind of gigantic arm wrestle on a global scale,"e; writes Marc Trachtenberg, "e;but this view fails to grasp the essence of what was really going on.
A leading intellectual historian traces the origins of Barack Obama's ideasDerided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers.
An inside look at how religious diversity came to PrincetonIn 1981, Frederick Houk Borsch returned to Princeton University, his alma mater, to serve as dean of the chapel at the Ivy League school.
A history of the steel and arms maker that came to symbolize the best and worst of modern German historyThe history of Krupp is the history of modern Germany.
An unprecedented look at secret documents showing the deliberate nature of the Armenian genocideIntroducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects.
Mary Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams tells the little-known story of Thurgood Marshall's work with Kenyan leaders as they fought with the British for independence in the early 1960s.
How a Chinese pirate defeated European colonialists and won Taiwan during the seventeenth centuryDuring the seventeenth century, Holland created the world's most dynamic colonial empire, outcompeting the British and capturing Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
How the Grand Alliance of World War II succeeded-and then collapsed-because of personal politicsIn the spring of 1945, as the Allied victory in Europe was approaching, the shape of the postwar world hinged on the personal politics and flawed personalities of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.
WINNER of the International Affairs Book of the Year at the Political Book Awards 2014Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2013The First World War followed a period of sustained peace in Europe during which people talked with confidence of prosperity, progress and hope.
How the conflict between political Islamists and secular-leaning nationalists has shaped the history of the modern Middle EastIn 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president-Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood-and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group.
How the Ottomans refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authorityThe medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750-1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority.
How Machiavelli's Christianity shaped his political thoughtTo many readers of The Prince, Machiavelli appears to be deeply un-Christian or even anti-Christian, a cynic who thinks rulers should use religion only to keep their subjects in check.
France's New Deal is an in-depth and important look at the remaking of the French state after World War II, a time when the nation was endowed with brand-new institutions for managing its economy and culture.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as one of the greatest philosopher-theologians America has ever produced, and recent years have seen a remarkable increase in research on his writings.
This book takes a fascinating look at the iconic figure of the Native American in the British cultural imagination from the Revolutionary War to the early twentieth century, and examining how Native Americans regarded the British, as well as how they challenged their own cultural image in Britain during this period.
A revealing look at Jewish men and women who secretly explore the outside world, in person and online, while remaining in their ultra-Orthodox religious communities What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known?
A fascinating history of the international human rights movement as seen by one of its foundersDuring the past several decades, the international human rights movement has had a crucial hand in struggles against totalitarian regimes and crimes against humanity.
