The two-hundred-year-long relationship between the Arab world and United States has been fraught with tension and resentment. What began in the nineteenth century as a favorable exchange of cultural understanding and economic opportunity deteriorated with America's increasing interest in oil, and finally collapsed when America's pushed for the legitimization of the State of Israel. In this provocative new book, Lebanese-American historian Ussama Makdisi explores America's fractured relationship with the Arab world, and offers policy recommendations that can lead to its repair.

Ussama Makdisi is Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies and professor of history at Rice University. In April 2009, the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar for his contributions to enriching the country's discourse on Islam. His previous book, Artillery of Heaven, won the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize.