Libya

Massacre at Tobruk: The British Assault on Rommel, 1942 (Stackpole Military History Series)

In the late summer of 1942, Rommel's Afrika Korps stood perilously close to breaking through to Cairo and the Nile, having already taken the fortress of Tobruk. In a desperate effort to halt the Germans and buy time for the Allies, British forces including the Royal Marines, Royal Navy, the SAS, and the Long Range Desert Group attempted to storm Tobruk and destroy the Axis port there. The operation failed with terrible losses. Peter C. Smith unearths many previously unrevealed facts and highlights the bravery and endurance of those who participated.

Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected U.S. president was forced to confront an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists sworn to carry out jihad against all Western powers. As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Victory in Tripoli recounts the untold story of one of the defining challenges overcome by the young U.S. republic. This fast-moving and dramatic tale examines the events that gave birth to the Navy and the Marines and re-creates the startling political, diplomatic, and military battles that were central to the conflict. This highly interesting and informative history offers deep insight into issues that remain fundamental to U.S. foreign policy decisions to this day.

A History of Modern Libya

Libya is coming in from the cold, but for most of the three decades following Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's self-styled revolution in 1969, the country was politically isolated and labelled a pariah state. Dirk Vandewalle, one of only a handful of Western scholars to visit the country during this time, is intimately acquainted with Libya. He offers a lucid and comprehensive account of Libya's past, and corrects some of the misunderstandings about its present. The story begins in the 1900s with a portrait of Libya's desert terrain and the personalities that shaped its development. Professor Vandewalle then covers Libya's history during the Italian colonial period (1911-1943) and the monarchy that ruled between 1951 and 1969. He goes on to discuss the subsequent regime of Colonel Qadhafi and the economic, political, and ideological developments that he engendered. Finally, he describes the most recent events that brought Libya back into the international fold. As the first comprehensive history of Libya over the last two decades, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of North Africa, the Middle East, and by those who are visiting and doing business in the region. Diederik (Dirk) Vandewalle is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and former chair of its Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program. His academic specialty focuses on the political economy of North Africa, and on strategies of political and economic liberalization in the region. Vandewalle is the author of Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-building ( 1998), editor of two volumes on Libya and North Africa, and author of numerous journal articles. He has received, among a number of awards, a Fulbright and Social Science Research Council grant for his research, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute of International Development and at Harvard's Center of Middle Eastern Studies.

Dirk Vandewalle offers a lucid and comprehensive account of Libya's past, and corrects some of the misunderstandings about its present. This book will be welcomed by scholars and students of North Africa, the Middle East, and by those who are visiting and doing business in the region.

American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945

With the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, America's relationship with the Middle East exploded to the forefront of our national consciousness. Looking back more than a half-century, Douglas Little offers valuable, historical context for anyone seeking a better understanding of this complicated relationship. He explores the encounters between the United States and the Middle East since 1945, focusing particularly on the complex, sometimes inconsistent attitudes and interests that have shaped U.S. relations in the region.

Little begins by exposing the persistence of "orientalist" stereotypes in American popular culture and then examines U.S. policy toward the Middle East from many angles. Chapters focus on America's increasing dependence on petroleum; U.S.-Israeli relations; the threat of communism; the rise of revolutionary nationalist movements in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Libya; the futility of U.S. military and covert intervention; and the unsuccessful attempt to broker a "peace-for-land" settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The overarching theme of the book is that a combination of American omnipotence and profound cultural misunderstanding ensured that the United States would encounter trouble in the Middle East after 1945 and that those forces continue to bedevil the relationship between these vastly different cultures to the present day.

Long Range Desert Group (Greenhill Military Paperbacks)

Tunisia of Ahmad Bey Eighteen Thirty-Seven to Eighteen Fifty-Five (Studies on the Near East)

Piracy and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century North Africa: The Journal of Thomas Baker, English Consul in Tripoli, 1677-1685

Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970

Architecture And Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya: An Ambivalent Modernism (Studies in Modernity and National Identity)

To be a tourist in Libya during the period of Italian colonization was to be surrounded by modern metropolitan culture, including its systems of transportation and accommodation and its hierarchies of political and social control, as well as indigenous architecture and culture. Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya shows how Italian authorities in Libya made use of the contradictory forces of modernity and tradition to both legitimize their colonial enterprise and construct a vital tourist industry. Although one of the essential goals of tourists was to escape the boundaries of the metropole in favor of experiencing "difference," that difference was almost always framed, contained, and even defined by Western culture.

McLaren argues that the "modern" and the "traditional" were entirely constructed by colonial authorities, who balanced their need to project an image of a modern and efficient network of travel and accommodation with the necessity of preserving the characteristic qualities of the indigenous culture. What made the tourist experience in Libya distinct from that of other tourist destinations was the constant oscillation between modernizing and preservation tendencies. The movement between these forces is reflected in the structure of the book, which proceeds from the broadest level of inquiry into the Fascist colonial project in Libya to the tourist organization itself, and finally into the architecture of the tourist environment, offering a way of viewing state-driven modernization projects and notions of modernity from a historical and geographic perspective.

This is an important book for architectural historians and for those interested in colonial and postcolonial studies, as well as Italian studies, African history, literature, and cultural studies more generally.

The City of Tunis: Evolution of an Urban System