A history of the land and people of the geographic entity known as North Africa.

This contemporary text—the first in over a decade on the region—presents the geography of the Middle East and North Africa, defined as the Arab World, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Thematically organized, the book’s eleven chapters focus on the region’s physical and climatic setting, demographic characteristics, migration patterns, religious and linguistic diversity, political map, offshore claims, oil and gas resources, and subregions and states. Within this framework, Drysdale emphasizes pressing current problems: the impact of climate change in a region where some areas already suffer from extreme summer heat and aridity, the challenge of providing additional water in a region where per capita availability of freshwater is already the lowest in the world, the impact of high fertility and rapid population growth in a fragile environment where economies are often unable to absorb young workers entering the labor force, the looming prospect of an aging population, the effects of out- and in-migration, the diverse impact and role of Islam in daily and public life, the integrative consequences of linguistic and ethnic diversity, the evolution and imperfections of the political map, ongoing territorial and boundary disputes that often have global repercussions, external dependence on the region’s prolific oil and gas resources, and the extreme regional inequalities associated with their presence or absence. This timely and insightful analysis is essential reading for students of the region who need a better understanding of key regional characteristics, challenges, and issues.

Middle East and North Africa: Climate, Culture, and Conflicts – too hot to handle? The volume offers an account of ideas, historical case studies and current debates on climate change and its consequences from perspectives of eco-theology, archeology, history, geography, political science and technology.

The studies collected in this volume cover three broad areas of the history of North Africa as part of the Roman Empire. Studies devoted to the history of 'political institutions' are followed by ones that detail aspects of interactions between nomad and sedentarist communities in the African provinces. The book concludes with two studies on African christianity. In all of these, special attention is given to the indigenous institutions, economies and beliefs that informed the confrontation between 'African' and 'Roman'. The studies in general argue for a strongly 'interactionist' approach to historians' reconstruction of the history of the period and the region - a perspective that would emphasise the continuous conflict between the two world of African and Roman.

The existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of law, combat crime and corruption, and prevent humanitarian crises. These human rights include freedom from torture, freedom of expression, press freedom, women's rights, children's rights, and the protection of minorities. This book surveys the countries of the Near East and North Africa, and is augmented by a current bibliography and useful indexes by subject, title and author.