Why is the Middle East a crisis factory, and how can it be fixed? What does the future look like for its 500 million people? And what role should the West play? Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash tell the story of the modern Middle East as a series of broken promises. They chart the entrenchment of tyranny, terrorism and foreign intervention, showing how these systems of oppression simultaneously feed off and battle each other. Exploring demographic, economic and social trends, the authors paint a picture of the region's prospects that is alarming yet hopeful. Finally, they present ambitious and thoughtful ideas that reject both aggressive military intervention and cynical deals with dictators. This book, written by two children of the region, is about the failures of history, and the reasons for hope. The Middle East Crisis Factory offers a bold vision for those seeking peace and democracy in the Middle East.

Winner of the 2014 Lionel Trilling Book Award An examination of the failure of the United States as a broker in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, through three key historical moments For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. In this book, acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi zeroes in on the United States’s role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process. Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States’ involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. The first moment he investigates is the “Reagan Plan” of 1982, when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin refused to accept the Reagan administration’s proposal to reframe the Camp David Accords more impartially. The second moment covers the period after the Madrid Peace Conference, from 1991 to 1993, during which negotiations between Israel and Palestine were brokered by the United States until the signing of the secretly negotiated Oslo accords. Finally, Khalidi takes on President Barack Obama’s retreat from plans to insist on halting the settlements in the West Bank. Through in-depth research into and keen analysis of these three moments, as well as his own firsthand experience as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 pre–Oslo negotiations in Washington, DC, Khalidi reveals how the United States and Israel have actively colluded to prevent a Palestinian state and resolve the situation in Israel’s favor. Brokers of Deceit bares the truth about why peace in the Middle East has been impossible to achieve: for decades, US policymakers have masqueraded as unbiased agents working to bring the two sides together, when, in fact, they have been the agents of continuing injustice, effectively preventing the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in the region.

We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or an ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political issue, fundamental to the new doctrine of ‘resilience’ that is becoming a key term of art for governing planetary life in the 21st Century. No longer should we think in terms of evading the possibility of traumatic experiences. Catastrophic events, we are told, are not just inevitable but learning experiences from which we have to grow and prosper, collectively and individually. Vulnerability to threat, injury and loss has to be accepted as a reality of human existence. In this original and compelling text, Brad Evans and Julian Reid explore the political and philosophical stakes of the resilience turn in security and governmental thinking. Resilience, they argue, is a neo-liberal deceit that works by disempowering endangered populations of autonomous agency. Its consequences represent a profound assault on the human subject whose meaning and sole purpose is reduced to survivability. Not only does this reveal the nihilistic qualities of a liberal project that is coming to terms with its political demise. All life now enters into lasting crises that are catastrophic unto the end.

This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.