Journalist Christopher Hitchens examines events leading up to the partition of Cyprus and its legacy. He argues that the intervention of four major foreign powers Turkey, Greece, Britain, and the United States turned a local dispute into a major disaster. In a new Afterword, Hitchens reviews the implications of Cyprus's applications for European Union membership and more.

Journalist Christopher Hitchens examines events leading up to the partition of Cyprus and its legacy. He argues that the intervention of four major foreign powers Turkey, Greece, Britain, and the United States turned a local dispute into a major disaster. In a new Afterword, Hitchens reviews the implications of Cyprus's applications for European Union membership and more.

In this incendiary book, Hitchens takes the floor as prosecuting counsel and mounts a devastating indictment of Henry Kissinger, whose ambitions and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter.

In the troubled island of Cyprus, the national interests and rivalries of Greece and Turkey still collide, the population remains divided between the Greek and Turkish communities and the country is still a cat's paw of outside powers - especially the USA and the now resurgent Russia - as it has been since the acquisition of the island by Britain in 1878. Global rivalry between the great powers and Cyprus's vitally strategic position in the Eastern Mediterranean - a 'listening post' in the Cold War and even today - has meant that the populations have never been free to shape their own destinies which have been constantly influenced by great power interests. These are problems that have been brought into sharp focus by Cyprus's entry into the European Union. William Mallinson's book is a fast-moving and incisive narrative history which portrays Cyprus as a continuing source of international tension in the Mediterranean and beyond. It features the latest source material from the recently released National Archive, vivid interviews with key players, even reports which raise awkward and embarrassing questions. His critical eye uncovers the underlying story of American and British involvement in the island's affairs, first as a key territory in Cold War politics with its close proximity to the Middle East and Asia and now as a key asset in the 'war on terror'. Mallinson's new insights and revelations on the period leading up to and following the Turkish invasion in 1974, when Greece and Turkey - both NATO members - were on the brink of war are fascinating and make essential reading. Henry Kissinger is seen to be even more the master puppeteer, pressuring Britain not to give up her bases. Mallinson examines how after the Turkish invasion Kissinger planned the abortive Annan Plan to divide the island and how he regarded the retention of Cyprus as vital for a future solution of the Arab-Israeli problem. For Kissinger Cyprus was the important square on the 'world chequer-board' while British influence continued to decline and her independence in foreign policy was virtually non-existent. Mallinson also explores how Turkey's drive to join the EU will affect not only stability in Cyprus but also the whole region, as Russia's influence in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean expands. So, in William Mallinson's words, 'Cyprus lies [still] at the epicentre of this whole geopolitical merry-go-round'.

This book uses individual cases and discussions with both hostages, terrorists and negotiators to provide a rounded view of current issues.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontation with the forces of radical Islam. Using hundreds of recently declassified government documents, historian David Farber takes the first in-depth look at the hostage crisis, examining its lessons for America's contemporary War on Terrorism. Unlike other histories of the subject, Farber's vivid and fast-paced narrative looks beyond the day-to-day circumstances of the crisis, using the events leading up to the ordeal as a means for understanding it. The book paints a portrait of the 1970s in the United States as an era of failed expectations in a nation plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. It reveals an American government ill prepared for the fall of the Shah of Iran and unable to reckon with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his militant Islamic followers. Farber's account is filled with fresh insights regarding the central players in the crisis: Khomeini emerges as an astute strategist, single-mindedly dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The Americans' student-captors appear as less-than-organized youths, having prepared for only a symbolic sit-in with just a three-day supply of food. ABC news chief Roone Arledge, newly installed and eager for ratings, is cited as a critical catalyst in elevating the hostages to cause célèbre status. Throughout the book there emerge eerie parallels to the current terrorism crisis. Then as now, Farber demonstrates, politicians failed to grasp the depth of anger that Islamic fundamentalists harbored toward the United States, and Americans dismissed threats from terrorist groups as the crusades of ineffectual madmen. Taken Hostage is a timely and revealing history of America's first engagement with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, one that provides a chilling reminder that the past is only prologue.

Examines the changing situations in which hostages were used in the Europe and the Mediterranean world from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, touching on a wide range of topics in military, diplomatic, political, social, gender, economic, and legal history.