This is a comprehensive overview of twentieth-century Russian history that treats the years from 1917 to 2000 as a single period and analyses the peculiar mixture of political, economic and social ingredients that made up the Soviet compound. It takes the This volume concentrates on the Balkan wars and World War II, which both had their origins in the desire of nationalist circles to complete the territorial unification of their states. A substantial part of this book deals with the wartime experience, the A brilliant overview of the history and politics of the Middle East over the last two centuries, from Napoleon's assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations, the Palestinian questio |