Sicker shows that the political history of the pre-Islamic Middle East provides ample evidence that the geopolitical and religious factors conditioning political decision-making tended to promote military solutions to political problems, ...

This equates to a concept of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, a concept that underlays Muslim geopolitical thinking throughout the thousand-year period covered in this book.

This book will serve as a vital resource for students, scholars, and other researchers involved with Middle East History, Political Islam, and Modern European History.

In effect, the history of the period may be viewed as the story of the conflict between Roman imperialism and Judaean nationalism.

This is a thoughtful analysis that will be of concern to scholars and students involved with political theory as well as the concerned citizen.

This is a provocative analysis that will be of interest to scholars, students, researchers, and policymakers involved with inter-American relations and U.S. diplomacy.

The geopolitical history of the Middle East in the twentieth century, which falls into three relatively distinct phases, is best understood when approached simultaneously from the global and the regional perspectives.

Sicker examines the fundamental norms of civic conduct considered essential to the emergence and moral viability of the good society envisioned in the source documents and traditions of Judaism.

Sicker examines the early stages of the process by which Palestine, an obscure and relatively miniscule backwater of the Ottoman Empire, became a critical factor in the history and convoluted politics of the modern Middle East.

Sicker provides a synthesis from a wide range of sources that have not previously been integrated to present an unromanticized recapitulation of the events and personalities that led to the troubled birth of modern Israel.