The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century. By Robert J. Lieber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 268p. $28.00.

This volume joins a cottage industry of books on the proper American role in a post-9/11 world. In it, Robert J. Lieber advocates an active U.S. foreign policy based on American primacy.

In “Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict” (Perspectives on Politics 3:1), Jonathan B. Isacoff does a great service by bringing together the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the study of international relations (IR). All too often, political scientists shy away from the ongoing conflict and the heat such work could generate on campus. At the same time, Isacoff's application of his multiple-schools model reveals some limitations with respect to political scientists' use of history generally and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. In this essay, I note four areas where his argument merits further scrutiny.Jeremy Pressman is assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut (jeremy.pressman@uconn.edu). He is currently writing about how allies stop each other from going to war. His writings on the Arab-Israeli conflict include Point of No Return: The Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace (with Geoffrey Kemp). The author thanks Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, two anonymous reviewers, and the editorial staff of Perspectives on Politics for helpful comments on earlier drafts.