How did Tunisia succeed in eliminating the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism? Borowiec examines the actions, which begin with the removal of the senile President Habib Bourguiba in 1987, known in Tunisia as the change. Today, while its next door neighbor, Algeria, is in the midst of an upheaval threatening modernization and a secular government, Tunisia is the only Muslim country to ban polygamy and to introduce state-funded contraception. Borowiec begins by sketching Tunisia's history from the Phoenician era onward. He provides a detailed analysis of the country's Islamic movement, and then examines the efforts of Bourguiba's successor, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to liberalize the economy, foster a Western orientation, and make education accessible to all. Interviews with leading government officials as well as educators, writers, and average Tunisians puts a human face on a process that may allow Tunisia to make the transition to become a young developed nation at the beginning of the next millennium. This book is important to scholars, researchers, and the general public concerned with events in North Africa and the Arab world.

Borowiec portrays Cyprus as a permanent source of tension in the Eastern Mediterranean and a potential trigger for future conflict between Greece and Turkey. He describes the depth of animosity between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and analyzes the obstacles in the path of a search for a solution.

Most casual observers see the conflict between Greeks and Turks on a strategic Mediterranean island as a struggle within a sovereign state. Borowiec concludes that there has never been a Cypriot nation, only Greeks and Turks living in Cyprus, separated by the hostility reflecting the traditional animosity between their motherlands. If these two groups could forget their past conflicts--as did, for example, Germany and Poland--there might be a way to end the partition of Cyprus. At the present time, however, the crisis is likely to continue with varying degrees of tension, threatening the entire Eastern Mediterranean and undermining NATO's cohesion.

Borowiec traces the history of Cyprus from antiquity through Ottoman and British colonial rule and the post-independence period. He describes the break between the island's communities in 1963, the UN intervention of 1964, and the path toward the Athens junta's coup in 1974 which caused the Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus. He compares the conflicting views of the protagonists--the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority. Considerable attention is paid to the two separate economic and political entities on the island. Borowiec analyzes the futility of myriad international mediation efforts and suggests possible ways of creating a climate propitious to dialogue. This important new look at the Cypriot conflict will be valuable to researchers, policy makers, and scholars involved with the Eastern Mediterranean and conflict/peace studies.

Written by a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, this book examines the background of the ill-fated 63-day uprising that pitted poorly armed Polish civilians and volunteers against Hitler's well-armed and veteran forces. Borowiec also examines Stalin's decision to stand by while Warsaw and its defenders were destroyed.

Borowiec provides a day-by-day account of the combat and the efforts to resupply the partisans by Allied aircraft. In this, the first English-language history of the Uprising, Borowiec relies on his own experiences, those of other participants, and other materials not usually available to Western scholars and researchers interested in World War II. His firsthand account brings those 63 days to life.

In many ways, Ohio has become for America the quintessential heartland state, for what happens in Ohio happens over all of the United States. Ohio has been a bellwether swing state for the winning candidate in every presidential election since 1944 except one. It's also the place where fast-food companies test-market new products and the place where chewing gum, Teflon, and the first cash register, first vacuum cleaner, first airplane, first traffic signal, and first gas-powered automobile were invented. You can't get more heartland than that. Even the state's Division of Travel and Tourism has relied on "Ohio, the Heart of It All" as its popular motto since the Reagan years to attract visitors to the state.Yet everything seemed to change after the 2004 presidential election, when political scientists and long-time journalists looked more closely at the election results: Ohio was changing, just as America was changing. Big differences were noted between voters who lived in the cities and those who lived around the cities who aligned with voters from rural areas. Andrew Borowiec, an eminent photographer based in Akron, took notice, and he headed out with his camera to take a closer look at the electoral map on the ground. And what he found was astonishing. The once rolling farmlands that used to surround the cities and define Middle America were rapidly giving way to vast suburban housing developments of nearly identical, hastily built mini-mansions with enormous garages and fancy yards. These were new bedroom communities for long-distance commuters to the cities where there were jobs. And the traditional Main Streets of yore were being eclipsed by "lifestyle centers": shopping malls filled with national chains whose commercial architecture is a cacophonous blend of multiple periods and styles somehow blending into a fanciful display in which every detail is reproduced out of extruded foam and all of it designed to evoke an imagined past era of luxurious consumerism. Distinctive architectural and landscape styles of the region had given way to a ubiquitous culture of global marketing in which J. Crew was a more familiar name than James Joyce. Homogenization and conformity had won over the American dream.In the tradition of other famous interpreters of American land and life---among them J. B. Jackson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and the New Topographics photographers---Andrew Borowiec has used his keen eye and dedication to field work to give us a fresh, at times humorous, and ever razor-sharp view of what is going on in America today. There is a new heartland, a new American dream, and it can be found in the new residential and commercial landscapes of Ohio, and the rest of America, if we choose to open our eyes and take a look.

The world of factories and industry is a crucial yet oft-forgotten fact that undergirds the bustling prosperity of contemporary American life. Photographer Andrew Borowiec has spent his career exploring the industrial fields of middle America, and he now turns his camera's eye southward in "Industrial Perspective," exploring the panoramic landscapes along and near the Gulf of Mexico where oil and gas industry workers live and work.
Borowiec gained permission from oil corporations to enter their high-security sites and was thus able to photograph the delicate balance of land, life, and industry along the Gulf. The region's immense concentration of oil, chemical, and paper plants has created one of America's most unique and misunderstood contemporary landscapes, and Borowiec unravels its complexity in his evocative images. The visual sequence of "Industrial Perspective" reveals a continually evolving area that was transformed after World War II from a plantation system into an intricate and vast industrial complex built to accommodate the demands of a surging American economy. As Borowiec reveals through his striking images, this world of iron, oil, and heat enabled the American dream to come to fruition, yet its unyielding and stark character is virtually alien to those who do not live near the region.
"Industrial Perspective" is a compelling and vibrant collection of images that offers a unique and powerful view of the industrial realities of American abundance.