In this volume Kenneth Maxwell collects some of his most significant writings, following Portugal's imperial journal, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and from coast of Asia to the mouth of the Red Sea. He takes the reader on a lively journey from Macao to the Amazon forests, examining major themes such as the peopling of the Americas, the shaking up of continents, the spirit that took a "precocious" Portugal into its imperial venture and the rise of Brazil and is tumultuous history.

In this collection of bold and wide-ranging essays, Fouad Ajami offers his views on the Middle East, commenting on the state of affairs in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and more. He brings into focus the current struggles of the region through detailed historical standpoints and a highly personal perspective. The author discusses such landmark past events as the Algerian civil war, the state of the Arab world shortly after 9/11, and the pan-Arab awakening that began in 2011, as well as current events such as the Syrian rebellion and the repercussions of its brutal response from Bashar al-Assad. In addition, he sheds new light on some of the significant players in the Arab world, past and present, from Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel laureate of the Arabs, to Ziad Jarrah-the terrorist who is thought to have been at the controls of the plane forced down by its heroic passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11.

From the author of The Arab Predicament and Dream Palace of the Arabs comes a beautiful and haunting memoir of growing up in Lebanon in the '50s and '60s-the story of a sensitive young man and budding intellectual caught between tradition and modernity, east and west. As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami's sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the '50s and '60s. The time was a transitional one-not only for the Middle East, but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest American educators seeking to modernize Arab society. The disruptive forces of the Middle East-the Cold War, the Palestinian conflict, religious extremism, the money and oil of the Gulf-were only just beginning to appear. In this haunting and beautifully written memoir of his Lebanese childhood, the late Middle East scholar, Fouad Ajami, casts a discerning light into the corners and alleyways of an Arab reality that would later erupt into full view.

In this book, Fouad Ajami analyzes the struggle for influence along the Fertile Crescent--the stretch of land that runs from Iran's border with Iraq to the Mediterranean--among three of the regional powers who have stepped into the vacuum left by the West: Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. He explains that, of the three powers competing for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran are in it for the long haul. Each of those powers has a sense of mission and constituencies that enable them to stick it out and pay the price for a sphere of influence. Each country's prospects for supremacy is detailed and Ajami asserts that Iran must ultimately be reckoned to be the strongest.

In the summer of 1978, Musa al Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Shia sect in Lebanon, disappeared mysteriously while on a visit to Libya. As in the Shia myth of the "Hidden Imam," this modern-day Imam left his followers upholding his legacy and awaiting his return. Considered an outsider when he had arrived in Lebanon in 1959 from his native Iran, he gradually assumed the role of charismatic mullah, and was instrumental in transforming the Shia, a quiescent and downtrodden Islamic minority, into committed political activists.

What sort of person was Musa al Sadr? What beliefs in the Shia doctrine did his life embody? Where did he fit into the tangle of Lebanon's warring factions? What was behind his disappearance? In this fascinating and compelling narrative, Fouad Ajami resurrects the Shia's neglected history, both distant and recent, and interweaves the life and work of Musa al Sadr with the larger strands of the Shia past.

A revised edition of the author's acclaimed 1981 study of major political ideas and trends in the Arab world has been updated in the light of recent turbulent events: the death of Sadat, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.

How have Arab political ideas and institutions evolved since the 1967 War? How have the Arabs contended with the external influences to which their wealth has exposed them? What are the implications of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism? Fouad Ajami seeks to answer these and related questions in his illuminating study of the constraints and possibilities facing the Arab world today. The book is divided into three parts. The first documents the political and intellectual response to the defeat of 1967. The second part surveys the choices facing the Arab world as exemplified by the case of Egypt, held up as a mirror of the problems at issue in the whole region. The third part seeks to explain the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and locates its roots in the failures of the dominant political order, and the stalemate of secular political ideas. This revised edition of Ajami's acclaimed 1981 study has been updated in the light of recent turbulent events: the death of Sadat, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.

In the summer of 1978, Musa al Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Shia sect in Lebanon, disappeared mysteriously while on a visit to Libya. As in the Shia myth of the "Hidden Imam," this modern-day Imam left his followers upholding his legacy and awaiting his return. Considered an outsider when he had arrived in Lebanon in 1959 from his native Iran, he gradually assumed the role of charismatic mullah, and was instrumental in transforming the Shia, a quiescent and downtrodden Islamic minority, into committed political activists. What sort of person was Musa al Sadr? What beliefs in the Shia doctrine did his life embody? Where did he fit into the tangle of Lebanon's warring factions? What was behind his disappearance? In this fascinating and compelling narrative, Fouad Ajami resurrects the Shia's neglected history, both distant and recent, and interweaves the life and work of Musa al Sadr with the larger strands of the Shia past.