This volume is the result of several years of focused intellectual reflection and deeply felt anxiety about the fate of our ever-shrinking but increasingly conflictual world. It started with writing about the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East but gradually evolved into intense interest in other, similarly intractable blood feuds. The breadth of the volume reflects my current thinking about the origins of interethnic or intranational conflict in a number of the world's polities and possible ways of solving that conflict using a variety of governmental structures.

Numerous individuals and several organizations should be thanked for being of assistance to me, and I do thank them with genuine delight and deep gratitude. The University of Oxford invited me to spend the academic year 2002–2003 on its “campus,” this hallowed ground of intellectual pursuit for almost 800 years. Special thanks are due to Sir Marrack Goulding, St. Antony's gracious Warden, and to Professor Avi Shlaim, who sponsored my membership at the college. While at St. Antony's, I maintained a “dual citizenship” at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS), located in the village of Yarnton, outside Oxford. I would be remiss if I did not thank OCHJS's president, Professor Peter Oppenheimer, and the other Fellows at the centre. Several Oxford professors were particularly helpful in commenting on my early thinking, especially Peter Pulzer of All-Souls College and Renee Hirschon of St. Peter's College, as well as the Oxford/New York publisher Dr. Marion Berghahn.