Emperor Frederick II, called "enlightened" by historians yet decried as a despot by contemporaries, unleashes a civil war that tears the Holy Land apart. The heir to an intimidating legacy, a woman artist, and a boy king are caught up in the game of emperors and popes. Set against the backdrop of the Sixth Crusade, Rebels against Tyranny takes you from the harems of Sicily to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, from the palaces of privilege to the dungeons of despair. This is a timeless tale of youthful audacity taking on tyranny―but sometimes courage is not enough....

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Yan'an is China's "revolutionary holy land," the heart of Mao Zedong's Communist movement from 1937 to 1947. Based on thirty years of archival and documentary research and numerous field trips to the region, Joseph W. Esherick's book examines the origins of the Communist revolution in Northwest China, from the political, social, and demographic changes of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), to the intellectual ferment of the early Republic, the guerrilla movement of the 1930s, and the replacement of the local revolutionary leadership after Mao and the Center arrived in 1935. In Accidental Holy Land, Esherick compels us to consider the Chinese Revolution not as some inevitable peasant response to poverty and oppression, but as the contingent product of local, national, and international events in a constantly changing milieu.

The Near East in the era of the Crusades was home to diverse populations Orthodox and Latin Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Jews and Samaritans. It was the meeting-point for Arab, Turkish, Byzantine and Frankish culture, the latter itself a mixture of Western traditions adapted to circumstances in the crusader states by the Europeans who had settled in the Holy Land. While the Crusades have become a synonym for brutality and bigotry, the crusader states represented a positive example of harmonious coexistence across two centuries. Likewise, while scholars from a wide range of disciplines including archaeology, art history, and medicine have shed light on diverse aspects of the crusader states, to date there is no single introductory source that provides a comprehensive overview of these unique states as a starting point for the uninitiated. The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades aims to fill this gap while correcting common misconceptions by bringing together recent scholarly research on a range of topics to create a comprehensive description. It covers the history, demography, state institutions, foreign policy, economy, art, architecture, and lifestyle of the people who lived in the crusader states in the period from 1100 to 1300. It is organized in two main parts: a chronological historical overview, and a topical discussion of key features of these unique kingdoms. An additional, final chapter describes the rise and fall of the House of Ibelin to give the entire history a human face. The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades would make an ideal textbook for undergraduates while offering hobby historians an introduction to the crusader states with tips for further research.

An introduction to the archaeology and history of ancient Palestine, from the destruction of Solomon's temple to the Muslim conquest.

Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Author Zeev Maoz's unique double perspective, as both an expert on the Israeli security establishment and esteemed scholar of Mideast politics, enables him to describe in harrowing detail the tragic recklessness and self-made traps that pervade the history of Israeli security operations and foreign policy. Most of the wars in which Israel was involved, Maoz shows, were entirely avoidable, the result of deliberate Israeli aggression, flawed decision-making, and misguided conflict management strategies. None, with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence, were what Israelis call "wars of necessity." They were all wars of choice-or, worse, folly. Demonstrating that Israel's national security policy rested on the shaky pairing of a trigger-happy approach to the use of force with a hesitant and reactive peace diplomacy, Defending the Holy Land recounts in minute-by-minute detail how the ascendancy of Israel's security establishment over its foreign policy apparatus led to unnecessary wars and missed opportunites for peace. A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land calls for sweeping reform of Israel's foreign policy and national security establishments. This book will fundamentally transform the way readers think about Israel's troubled history. Zeev Maoz is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, as well as the former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces' National Defense College. Cover photograph: Israel, Jerusalem, Western Wall and The Dome of The Rock. Courtesy of Corbis.

We all share an experience of exile—of longing for our true home. In this ESBT volume, Matthew S. Harmon explores how the theme of sin and exile is developed throughout Scripture, tracing a common pattern of human rebellion, God's judgment, and the hope of restored relationship, beginning with the first humans and concluding with the end of exile in a new creation.