From Perspectives on Politics, Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch (MIT): From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. An excerpt from Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez. A review of Tom Segev's 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (and an interview). Is this the end of the Two-State Solution? The consequences and possibilities of the civil war in Gaza.

From The Nation, a review of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr; Reaching for Power: The Shi'a in the Modern Arab World by Yitzhak Nakash; Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic by Ray Takeyh; and Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East by Ali Ansari. What do liberal hawks actually want to do regarding Iran? Ezra Klein wants to know. For Liberal Internationalism: Now that neoconservative policies have led us into disaster, it's time to give liberal internationalism a chance.

Iraq's Founding Mother: A review of Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell (and more). Bush's blank check: Do we really need to spend more than a trillion dollars a year to defeat small groups of terrorist fanatics? The Enemy of My Enemy: Fred Kaplan on how Sunni insurgents can help us. Kidnapped in Iraq: A review of Friendly Fire by Giuliana Sgrena and The Jill Carroll Story. Hindsight's insight on Iraq: Accusations of hypocrisy and flip-flopping shouldn't obscure the facts. Timothy Stewart-Winter on Sam Greenlee's 1976 mass-market paperback novel Baghdad Blues, the book that should be on President Bush's reading list.

In Iraq and beyond, America's empire of permanent bases grows at an alarming pace. World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warn scientists. The Pentagon v. Peak Oil: How wars of the future may be fought just to run the machines that fight them. 

From Wired, an article on a Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot. A review of The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism by Matthew Carr (and an interview). A look at the trade secrets of an Iraq insurgency bomb technician.