Includes bibliographical references and index.

The rise and expansion of Islam -- The development of Islamic civilization to the fifteenth century -- The Ottoman and Safavid Empires : a new imperial synthesis -- Forging a new synthesis : the pattern of reforms, 1789-1849 -- The Ottoman Empire and Egypt during the era of the tanzimat -- Egypt and Iran in the late nineteenth century -- The response of Islamic society -- The era of the young Turks and the Iranian constitutionalists -- World war I and the end of the Ottoman order -- Authoritarian reform in Turkey and Iran -- The Arab struggle for independence : Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan from the interwar era to 1945 -- The Arab struggle for independence : Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia from the interwar era to 1945 -- The Palestine mandate and the birth of the state of Israel -- Democracy and authoritarianism : Turkey and Iran -- The Middle East in the age of Nasser : the Egyptian base -- The Middle East in the age of Nasser : the radicalization of Arab politics -- Israel and the Palestinians from 1948 to the 1970s -- Changing patterns of war and peace : Egypt and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s -- The consolidation of authoritarian rule in Syria and Iraq : the regimes of Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Husayn -- The Iranian revolution and the resurgence of Islam -- The Arabian Peninsula in the petroleum era -- Challenges to the existing order : the Palestinian uprising and the 1991 Gulf War -- A peace so near, a peace so far : Israeli-Palestinian relations since the Gulf War -- Patterns of continuity and change since the 1991 Gulf War -- America's troubled moment in the Middle East.