DOC Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security by Matthew Dallek in History

Description

Trouble in the West provides the first full and continuous account of the Persian-Egyptian War; a conflict that continued for nearly the two-hundred-year duration of the Persian Empire. Despite its status as the largest of all ancient Persian military enterprises--including any aimed at Greece--this conflict has never been reconstructed in any detailed and comprehensive way. Thus; Trouble in the West adds tremendously to our understanding of Persian imperial affairs. At the same time; it dramatically revises our understanding of eastern Mediterranean and Aegean affairs by linking Persian dealings with Greeks and other peoples in the west to Persia's fundamental; ongoing Egyptian concerns. In this study; Stephen Ruzicka argues that Persia's Egyptian problem and; conversely; Egypt's Persian problem; were much more important in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean worlds than our conventional Greek-centered perspective and sources have allowed us to see. In looking at this conflict as one stage in an enduring east-west conflict between successive Near Eastern imperial powers and Egypt--one which stretched across nearly the whole of ancient history--it represents an important turning point: by pulling in remote western states and peoples; who subsequently became masters of Egypt; western opposition to Near Eastern power was sustained right up to the 7th century Arab conquests. For classicists and historians of the ancient Near East; Trouble in the West will serve as a valuable; and long-overdue; resource.