For those of us seriously interested in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis has attained a stature in the field and with the general reading public unrivaled by any historian of the Middle East and Islam.

The secular, pro-American autocratic political cultures that have defined much of the Middle East are dying, if not dead, and the United States would do well not to pretend otherwise.

Why does Iran consider Afghanistan so important? What are Iran's strategic aims in Afghanistan?

Rather than stemming from irrationality, fear, or hatred, racism developed in Europe, prior to slavery, as part of a rational and scientific project to understand the world.