APSU History Professor contributes to new scholarly work on Israel

Clarksville, TN – Early in the morning on May 31st, 2010, a group of Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship in the Mediterranean Sea, filled with pro-Palestinian activists. The boat was part of an aid-flotilla, seeking to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The commandoes planned to bring the ship into the nearby port of Ashdod, but a scuffle soon broke out between the soldiers and the passengers. When the shooting stopped, nine activists were dead and several soldiers were wounded.

The incident sparked an international crisis, with media outlets across the globe picking up the story. Dr. Christos Frentzos, an Austin Peay State University associate professor of history, watched the ongoing news coverage from a unique vantage point. He was in Israel during those tumultuous days as part of a counterterrorism fellowship, sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. [Read more]

Politics high on this writer’s book list

This year I read a lot of books, or least a lot of books for me.  A couple  stand out in my mind, and so I thought I would share them with you.

“The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ (2006), by Lawrence Wright

This book is tireless in its details; but do not let that discourage you from giving it a read.  The book  is rather short at 373 pages; however, it is heavily noted and very user friendly. It contains a 10 page glossary of principal characters with brief descriptions of their importance; which is a invaluable resource in helping the reader keep track of the multitude of players with similar names.

Like most other histories of Muslim fundamentalism (such as the BBC video series “Power of Nightmares”), Wright starts with the story of Sayyid Qutb.  Qutb was an Egyptian writer and Muslim that traveled through America in the late 1940’s.  His experiences and perceptions, started the generational snowball that  led to 9/11. [Read more]