Modern and ancient history are tangled and layered upon each other in the Middle East. Israel and the Palestinians are always in the foreground, but conflict and change in the Middle East stretches beyond these two players. Axelrod helps you gain a better understanding of the national ambitions, religious zeal, and historical claims and counterclaims of all sides.

Includes maps of: Middle East; Divided Kingdom [Israel - Judah]; Tenth-Sixth Centuries B.C.E.; Great Britain's Division of the Mandated Area of Palestine; Partition Plan of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181; Israel before June 1967; Cease-fire Lines after the Six-Day War.

Clash of empires. The Crusades ; The Mongol invasions ; The Ottoman era -- Peoples in conflict. Visions of Zion ; A "war to end all wars" ; The power of political Islam ; The Holocaust and the Exodus -- A history of violence. Oil, autocracy, and revolt ; The Arab-Israeli war, 1948-1949 ; Suez: crisis and war, 1956 ; Palestinians stand up ; The six-day war, 1967 ; The Yom Kippur war, 1973 -- Global battleground. Iran's Islamic revolution ; The Gulf war ; Acts of asymmetry ; The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- Risings and revolutions. Borderlands ; Storms of the "Arab spring" ; Civil war in Syria.