"Illuminating. . . . The entire field of modern Middle Eastern Studies still has remarkably little closely researched social history of this sort. Beinin's study adds to the work recently published by revisionist Israeli historians, debunking the dominant view of the origin and early history of the Palestine conflict and extending the revision into the 1950s and early 1960s. His explanation of the different political paths that were taken, turned back from, and lost sight of is an important—indeed vital—contribution to contemporary scholarly and political understanding."—Timothy Mitchell, New York University

Since the October Revolution of 1917 there has been considerable debate among both socialists and enemies of socialism on the class nature of the Soviet Union. This debate waxed and waned over time in good measure as a function of the international policies of the Soviet Union and its enemies. We have seen a great revival of interest in the question among sympathizers of Cultural Revolution era of the People's Republic of China, which in 1967 had claimed that capitalism has been restored in the Soviet Union. Many of the issues and arguments raised by various branches of the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s and 1940s are once again being discussed and supported by the Maoist camp in response to this debate. On the other hand defenders of the Soviet Union continue to claim that the country was socialist, and this book expounds in detail just why socialism was indeed still prevailing in the Soviet Union at the time of it's publication in the late 1970's and early 80's.

“Laslie chronicles how the Air Force worked its way from the catastrophe of Vietnam through the triumph of the Gulf War, and beyond.” —Robert M. Farley, author of Grounded The U.S. Air Force’s poor performance in Operation Linebacker II and other missions during Vietnam was partly due to the fact that they had trained their pilots according to methods devised during World War II and the Korean War, when strategic bombers attacking targets were expected to take heavy losses. Warfare had changed by the 1960s, but the USAF had not adapted. Between 1972 and 1991, however, the Air Force dramatically changed its doctrines and began to overhaul the way it trained pilots through the introduction of a groundbreaking new training program called “Red Flag.” In The Air Force Way of War, Brian D. Laslie examines the revolution in pilot instruction that Red Flag brought about after Vietnam. The program’s new instruction methods were dubbed “realistic” because they prepared pilots for real-life situations better than the simple cockpit simulations of the past, and students gained proficiency on primary and secondary missions instead of superficially training for numerous possible scenarios. In addition to discussing the program’s methods, Laslie analyzes the way its graduates actually functioned in combat during the 1980s and ’90s in places such as Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Iraq. Military historians have traditionally emphasized the primacy of technological developments during this period and have overlooked the vital importance of advances in training, but Laslie’s unprecedented study of Red Flag addresses this oversight through its examination of the seminal program. “A refreshing look at the people and operational practices whose import far exceeds technological advances.” —The Strategy Bridgei

Set in the northern Chinese provincial town of Dismount Fort, these 12 stories offer a fascinating glimpse of the lives of peasants, soldiers, workers, and party officials during the Great Cultural Revolution.

A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

Reconsidering the Russian Revolution a century later Reflecting on the fate of the Russian Revolution one hundred years after the October Uprising, Ronald Grigor Suny—one of the world’s leading historians of the period—explores how scholars and political scientists have tried to understand this historic upheaval, the civil war that followed, and the extraordinary intrusion of ordinary people onto the world stage. Suny provides an assessment of the choices made in the revolutionary years by Soviet leaders—the achievements, costs, and losses that continue to weigh on us today. A quarter century after the disintegration of the USSR, the revolution is usually told as a story of failure. However, Suny reevaluates its radical democratic ambitions, its missed opportunities, victories, and the colossal agonies of trying to build a kind of “socialism” in the inhospitable, isolated environment of peasant Russia. He ponders what lessons 1917 provides for Marxists and anyone looking for alternatives to capitalism and bourgeois democracy.