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With 30 years having passed since Central Asia and the South Caucasus emerged on the international stage, a new approach to understanding its contemporary dynamics is required. This volume argues for a multidimensional analysis of international, regional, and domestic cooperation and conflicts in the region. The authors analyze foreign policies of great powers such as Russia, China, U.S., EU, Japan, and Iran toward this part of the world. The work looks at regional issues and regionalism, including the Eurasian Union and the Belt and Road Initiative. A series of chapters study domestic processes ranging from clan politics, identity construction, the media, to non-state actors. The publication applies theoretical pluralism and utilizes realism, liberalism, constructivism, and FPA.

This publication is a collection of articles which summarise results of investigations into archival materials concerning wartime stories of various nations involved in the Great War. The objective of the authors was to analyse the wartime experience of individuals and local communities as well as whole nations. They further tried to present a closer, more personal overview of wartime drama. As a result the book portrays the impact of the Great War on the lives of multicultural communities, re-constructs individual war narratives and studies consequences of the conflict. The use of various types of historical materials from state archives and from other sources enabled the authors to create a multifaceted portrayal of the war seen from local and international perspectives.

Typical development in the American Southwest often resulted in scraping the desert lands of the ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. This transdisciplinary book explores the natural and built environment of this desert region and introduces development tools for shaping its future in a more sustainable way. It offers valuable insights to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and in other ecologically fragile regions around the world.

Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers who experienced the war in boot camps, cockpits, and foxholes, but never lost sight of the great global issues at stake. When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They fought on the losing side. After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism and denied them promotions and overseas assignments, foreshadowing the political persecution of the postwar Red Scare. African American veterans who fought in fully integrated units in Spain, faced second-class treatment in America's Jim Crow army. Nevertheless, the Lincolns served with distinction in every theater of the war and won a disproportionate number of medals for courage, dedication, and sacrifice. The 154 letters in this volume, selected from thousands held in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at NYU’s Tamiment Library, provide a new and unique perspective on aspects of World War II.