I am extremely grateful to Lexington Books for the outstanding professionalism, speed, and kindness with which each team member helped produce my latest book. It was a great pleasure working with Joseph Parry, the acquisitions editor; Eric Kuntzman and Madhu Koduvalli, the assistant editors; Jacqueline Plante, the production editor; and Vaishnavi Ganesh and her colleagues at Deanta Global.

A specter haunts America, the specter of Global Jihad, Islamic Holy War. That specter first vividly manifested in 1979 with Iran’s Islamist Revolution, mobs shouting “Death to America, the Great Satan,” the storming of America’s embassy in Tehran, and the plight of 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days. Over the next twenty-two years, that specter sporadically reappeared...

President George W. Bush expressed this sentiment during a meeting with Muslim leaders a year after September 11: “Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world....

In the Valhalla of great American military leaders, David Farragut, George Patton, George Rogers Clark, and Nathan Bedford Forrest stand tall among the inner circle. At times their words could be as memorable as their deeds as each...

A revolution is the rapid, systematic change from something into something else. A political revolution does not just replace one type of government with another but involves fundamentally transforming a people’s way of political, military,...

What happened on September 11, 2001 forever changed how we view terrorism.For good overviews, see: Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Jonathan R....

Afghanistan and Pakistan form a vast front in America’s crusade against Jihad.For good books on America, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, see: Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: the U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (New York: Penguin, 2009); Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink: The...

Iraqis may boast of harboring the ruins of ancient civilizations, but they inhabit a relatively new country that their government soon ruined.Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: Nation building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics,...

The first Jihadist group to war against America was not al-Qaeda, but Hezbollah, the revolutionary Shia Islamist movement rooted in Lebanon and with branches in Shia communities around...

Among history’s more haunting “what ifs” involves the Arab countries accepting rather than rejecting U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 that passed by 33 to 13 on November 29, 1947. The plan was to end Britain’s mandate on May 1, 1948, and split Palestine into sovereign Arab and Israeli...

All it took was a spark. Tarek Mohamed Bouazizi was a twenty-six-year-old street peddler of fruits and vegetables in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, 160 miles from Tunis, Tunisia’s capital. On December 17, 2010, three officials demanded bribes from him to keep selling. This trapped Bouazizi in a terrible dilemma. He could not pay the bribes without money and could not make money unless he...

Culture is critical to understanding politics at any level at any time and place. Culture—any group’s collective values, beliefs, behaviors, institutions, history, and aspirations—provides answers for members to ageless existential questions of one’s identity and purpose. Thus, there is a...

Jihad is real. Jihad began with Muhammad and Islam 1,400 years ago. A ­certain portion of the Muslim world has waged Jihad ever since. Islamism and Jihadist-led imperialism were synonymous for the religion’s first 1,050 or so years. Without Jihad, Islam would most likely have never been anything more than a small cult that might have died off like countless other cults. Islamist...

Sometimes nightmares are just that. They represent nothing more than our worst fears. America has a lot of nightmares like that. Tragically, at times the nation’s political leaders fail to distinguish between imaginary and real threats. Like Don Quixote they tilt at windmills that they believe are dragons. The result is squandered wealth, power, and lives. Yet, at other times the nightmares...

Ahmed, Rifaat Sayed, ed., The Militant Prophet: The Rejectionists, London: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1991.

Afghanistan,viii , ix , x , 2.117 , 2.121 , 2.127 , 2.135 , 2.174 , 2.177–2.185 , 2.193 , 3.72 , 4.28 , 4.52 , 4.56 , 1.5 , 5.25 , 5.52 , 1.5 , 1.5–6.42 , 6.68–6.77 , 6.103 , 6.109–6.118 , 6.157 , 6.165–2.58 , 7.43 , 11.18 , 11.28 ,...

William Nester is the award-winning author of thirty-six books on American national security, international relations, military history, and the nature of power. He is a professor at St. John’s University in New York.Year