In this first post of the new year, new decade, as concerns over the nuclear programs of countries such as Iran and North Korea continue to make headlines, we welcome the following commentary from Shane J. Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (forthcoming [...]

Gary R. Bunt, senior lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Wales, was kind enough to share his time and thoughts on the events surrounding the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the protests, and the deeply entrenched tensions between politics and religion. His most recent book, iMuslims, sheds new light on the nature of contemporary [...]

We’ve got several authors out there making appearances online in various forms. If you’ve missed some of the live appearances in this busy spring, take a moment to follow-up virtually.
In history…
Russell McClintock, author of Lincoln and the Decision for War, was interviewed recently by Michael Noirot over at This Mighty Scourge.
An excerpt from Amy Wood’s [...]

As Iran celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, a network of individuals and associations inside and outside of Iran known as Iranians for Peace have written to President Obama to encourage direct dialogue with Iranian authorities to find political solutions to nuclear standoffs. They also call for “a nuclear-weapon-free zone for ALL the [...]

By now we’ve all seen the clips of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush during a presser over the weekend. And in the aftermath, of course, the media started asking if we should apply some deeper symbolic meaning to the act, as if it were committed with some non-Western kind of anger, [...]

Fatemeh Keshavarz, author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran, has an article on Counterpunch in which she finds lessons on the ethics of torture in the writings of thirteenth-century Iranian poet Sa’di.