Afghan Endgames is a new book that seeks to provide a balanced, comprehensive, and realistic assessment of the alternatives for restoring peace and stability to Afghanistan. Bringing together some of the finest minds in the fields of military strategy, foreign policy, history, anthropology, ethics, and mass communications, the volume presents a range of options—from immediate withdrawal of all coalition forces to the maintenance of an open-ended, but greatly reduced military presence. The contributors weigh the many costs, risks, and benefits of each alternative to present the reader with a survey that is neither right nor left leaning, merely one that separates bad policy from the good.

While respecting the range of the contributors’ opinions, the volume editors distill the competing views and conclude by making recommendations for US policy going forward. Among the editors’ suggestions:
• Stop pushing specific withdrawal dates, and accept that we will need to stay as long as is necessary
• Create a customized military strategy that relies on Special Forces, station only five thousand troops in the country, and close most bases and downsize those that remain
• Encourage local political power rather than centralized control by the government in Kabul
• End expensive development projects, encourage local investment on necessary projects, and halt infrastructure efforts in areas where violence is tolerated and exported
• Reduce funding to Pakistan and strongly encourage India to lessen its presence in Afghanistan

Leon Fuerth, former national security advisor to vice president Al Gore and now a professor at The George Washington University, applauds Afghan Endgames for the advice it offers saying it “could not be more timely. [This book] offers a chance to think afresh. It also offers a new perspective on strategic goal setting for issues still in the future.”

Why Peace Fails: The Causes and Prevention of Civil War Recurrence
By Charles T. Call
Examines the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. Call argues that widely touted explanations of civil war—such as poverty, conflict over natural resources, and weak states—are far less important than political exclusion.

Afghan Endgames: Strategy and Policy Choices for America’s Longest War
Edited by Hy othstein and John Arquilla
Brings together some of the finest minds in the fields of history, strategy, anthropology, ethics, and mass communications to provide a clear, balanced, and comprehensive assessment of the alternatives for restoring peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Qatar: A Modern History
By Allen J. Fromherz
In this groundbreaking modern history, Fromherz presents a full portrait that analyzes Qatar’s crucial role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a broader historical context.

Ethics Beyond War’s End
Edited by Eric Patteron
Top thinkers in the field offer powerful contributions to our understanding of the vital issues associated with late- and postconflict in tough, real-world scenarios that range from the US Civil War to contemporary quagmires in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Congo.

Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions
By Beryl Radin
Renowned public administration scholar Radin reveals what may lie behind the failure of so many efforts at government management reform.

Cultural Chinese: Readings in Art, Literature, and History
By Zu-yan Chen and Hong Zhang
An advanced language textbook with a new approach to cultural integration and immersion. In this unique book, culture becomes the very core of language learning, transitioning its role from context to text.

Communicating the Word  explores themes crucial to these religions, like the different ways in which Christians and Muslims think of their scriptures as the “Word of God,” the possibilities and challenges of translating scripture, and the methods—and conflicts—involved in interpreting scripture in the past and today. Caner K. Dagli, of the College of the Holy Cross, recommends the book, saying, “There are very few people, specialist or otherwise, who will not learn much from this rich and varied volume. It is rare for interreligious exchange to take place at such a sustained level of quality, and much of the authors’ contributions manage to feel both erudite and direct.”

This volume is a record of the seventh Building Bridges seminar, held in 2008 at Villa Palazzola, near Rome. The seminar is an annual forum for theological dialogue between leading Christian and Muslim scholars. The 2008 conference was convened by Archbishop Rowan Williams, one of the world’s most prominent Christian leaders and theologians.

About the Editor: The Reverend Dr. David Marshall is the academic director of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Building Bridges seminar and a research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

Written by former and current intelligence officers, high-ranking government officials, and scholars, the book details intelligence successes and failures, discusses effective structuring of the intelligence community, examines the effective use of intelligence in counterinsurgency, explores the ethical dilemmas and practical gains of interrogation, and highlights the value of human intelligence and the dangers of the politicization of intelligence.

The lessons learned from this book stress the value of past experience and point the way toward running effective intelligence agencies in a democratic society. Scholars and professionals worldwide who specialize in intelligence, defense and security studies, and international relations will find this book to be extremely valuable.

Former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir John Scarlett, recommends Learning from the Secret Past, calling it “thought-provoking.” Likewise, Keith Jeffery, of Queen’s University Belfast and author of MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949, describes it as “an admirably executed combination of important case studies, apt primary source material, and illuminating analysis. Each example studied has clear contemporary relevance and I commend the book to policymakers and scholars, as well as anyone interested in the myriad significant ways intelligence has impinged on modern British history and politics.”

About the Editors: Robert Dover is a senior lecturer in international relations at Loughborough University (UK) and the author of The Europeanization of British Defence Policy, 1997-2005. Michael S. Goodman is a senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, official historian of the Joint Intelligence Committee (UK), and author of Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb

Much of current Christian ethics focuses more on persons and their virtues and vices exemplified by the work of virtue ethicists or on sinful social structures illustrated in the work of liberation theologians. These judgments fail to appreciate the reflexive character of human action and neglect the way our actions negotiate our response to God. Weaver develops a theologically robust moral anthropology that advances Christian understanding of persons and moral actions and contends we can better understand the theological import of moral actions by seeing ourselves as creatures who live, move, and have our being in God.

Kenneth R. Himes, of Boston College, recommends the book, asserting that The Acting Person in Christian Moral Life “will help reset the agenda for moral theology. In a nonpolemical manner the author points out the need to return to a style of moral analysis that is more attentive to individual acts and more explicitly theological in our way of understanding the significance of moral action. With wisdom and literary style Weaver has called us to focus again on topics—freedom, accountability, sin, reconciliation, and grace—that are central to Catholic moral theology.”

About the Author: Darlene Fozard Weaver is an associate professor of theology and director of the Theology Institute at Villanova University. She is the author of Self Love and Christian Ethics and coeditor of The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition.

The newly launched UPCC Book Collections provide libraries, researchers, and students with access to a wealth of high quality book-length scholarship, fully integrated with MUSE’s electronic journal collections. With digital books from more than 65 major university presses and related scholarly publishers, UPCC collections will offer over 14,000 book titles, alongside content from over 500 respected scholarly journals, in a user-friendly environment with rich discovery tools.

“Georgetown University Press is proud to be a part of this significant offering of scholarly content and looks forward to making more and more of our titles available through the UPCC collections,” says Gina Lindquist, assistant director and marketing and sales director at Georgetown University Press.

For more information on Project MUSE’s UPCC Book Collections and to browse title lists, click here.

This volume features thematic chapters on the linkages between religion, nationalism, and intolerance, transnational intra-faith conflict in the Shi’a-Sunni divide, and country case studies of societal divisions or conflicts in Egypt, Israel and Palestine, Kashmir, Lebanon, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Tajikistan. These cases explore how religious leaders in divided societies interpret the relationships among religious doctrines and human rights; define exclusive and inclusive national identities; articulate the connections among religion, state control, and state policy; rhetorically justify and/or mobilize for war; and ameliorate or mediate conflict.

Between Terror and Tolerance concludes by exploring the book’s findings and their implications for policies and programs of international non-governmental organizations that seek to encourage and enhance the capacity of religious leaders to play a constructive role in conflict resolution. Between Terror and Tolerance strives to find the path to a less violent world and answers some crucial questions: Under what conditions do religious leaders justify or catalyze violence along identity lines? And under what conditions do religious leaders lay the foundation, advocate, and sometimes directly mediate for peace?

About the Editor: Timothy D. Sisk is professor of international and comparative politics and director of the Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author or editor of several books including International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets.

Managing the Fiscal Metropolis, the first comprehensive analysis of the financial condition, management, and policy making of local governments in a metropolitan region, fills this gap. This groundbreaking study by Rebecca M. Hendrick, covers 264 Chicago suburban municipalities from the late 1990s to the present. In it she identifies and describes the primary factors and events that affect municipal financial decisions and financial conditions and explores the strategies these governments use to manage financial conditions and solve financial problems. Her study finds new evidence about the role of contextual factors—including other local governments—in the financial condition of municipalities and how municipal financial decisions and practices alter these effects. The wide economic and social diversity of the municipalities studied make its findings relevant on a national scale.

W. Bartley Hildreth applauds Managing the Fiscal Metropolis, saying, “Professor Hendrick provides a path-breaking examination of the financial health and fiscal decision-making strategies of suburban governments competing in a thriving metropolis. From front-page stories of government finance to many cursory academic studies, the common practice is to draw conclusions from a grab bag of indicators with weak theoretical connections. Tomorrow’s students and serious researchers should build their work on the comprehensive framework offered here if the goal is to truly diagnose and understand the fiscal heartbeat of local government finance.”

About the Author: Rebecca M. Hendrick is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago.