Guides: Master of Middle East Policy Studies (MMEPS): Finding Books

Obtaining Print Books at Washington D.C.

As a Pepperdine student or professor studying at Pepperdine University, you are classified as distance student/faculty learner and the library can mail books to you.

Please request all items from Pepperdine Libraries using Interlibrary Loan.

When requesting an interlibrary loan, choose “Pepperdine University Distance Education” under the heading Pickup Location and enter your delivery address in the Contact Address section of the request form. Pepperdine materials will be checked out to students for the seven weeks allowable under standard Pepperdine policy plus an additional two weeks to account for shipping in both directions. Items borrowed from other lending libraries are loaned at their discretion and the due dates on these materials reflect their individual policies. Renewals after the due date are discouraged, but in case of emergency, contact libill@pepperdine.edu to discuss possibilities. Due to the nature of the costs involved, we are not shipping audio-visual materials at this time. Items are shipped via UPS and should be returned to the library using the supplied return label.

Locating Books Near You

Although the Pepperdine library staff will be happy to provide materials via mail, distance learners may find that access to books is most conveniently available at a library near their work or home. To find the nearest location of a book title, access the WorldCat website (not the library database) at http://worldcat.org/advancedsearch Search for the book you need in this worldwide database, then type in your zip code to determine if a nearby library has the item. Please be aware that some libraries may require a fee for services to non-affiliated borrowers.

Example of Requesting a book by interlibrary loan. Click "Request" to have the book mailed to you.

On the interlibrary loan request page, be sure to request Distance Student for the Pickup Location to have the book mailed to you:

Searching for Pepperdine eBooks

This search box will limit your search to eBooks.

Sample eBooks on the Middle East

Dangerous Doctrine by Robert G. Kaufman
ISBN: 9780813167213

Publication Date: 2016

Much like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, President Barack Obama came to office as a politician who emphasized conviction rather than consensus. During his 2008 presidential campaign, he pledged to transform the role of the United States abroad. His ambitious foreign policy goals included a global climate treaty, the peaceful withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new relationship with Iran. Throughout Obama's tenure, pundits and scholars have offered competing interpretations of his "grand strategy," while others have maintained that his policies were incoherent or, at best, ad hoc. In Dangerous Doctrine, political scientist Robert G. Kaufman argues that the forty-fourth president has indeed articulated a clear, consistent national security policy and has pursued it with remarkable fidelity. Yet Kaufman contends that President Obama has imprudently abandoned the muscular internationalism that has marked US foreign policy since the end of World War II. Drawing on international relations theory and American diplomatic history, Kaufman presents a robust critique of the Obama doctrine as he situates the president's use of power within the traditions of American strategic practice. Focusing on the pivotal regions of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, this provocative study demonstrates how current executive branch leadership threatens America's role as a superpower, weakening its ability to spread democracy and counter threats to geopolitical order in increasingly unstable times. Kaufman proposes a return to the grand strategy of moral democratic realism, as practiced by presidents such as Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, with the hope of reestablishing the United States as the world's dominant power.
Cultures of counterproliferation : the making of US and Israeli policy on Iran's nuclear program by Raphael BenLevi
ISBN: 1003429521

Publication Date: 2024

"This book argues that the nature of counterproliferation strengthens the effect of cultural factors in policy choices, and illustrates this by focusing on US and Israeli policy towards the Iranian nuclear program. The US and Israel have been the two states most active in opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions, however, the respective strategies of each of these states have changed repeatedly. This book explores how competing cultural schools of thought on grand strategy within each state inform and shape the key policy decisions in their attempts to prevent a nuclear Iran. Drawing on numerous interviews conducted with former high-level officials in each country as well as published memoirs, this book first describes in detail the belief systems of the competing schools and then analyses the internal debates and key decisions on policy toward the Iranian Nuclear Program, while critically assessing the extent to which these beliefs influenced policy in the face of material-structural pressures. This in-depth analysis of the internal debates and dilemmas within the national leadership of the two states most prominent in the effort to prevent a nuclear Iran constitutes an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers who will inevitably face similar dilemmas in dealing with this ongoing challenge and additional cases of nuclear proliferation around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, US and Israeli foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics and IR in general"
Turkey under Erdoğan : how a country turned from democracy and the West by Dimitar Bechev
ISBN: 0300265018

Publication Date: 2022

An incisive account of Erdoğan's Turkey - showing how its troubling transformation may be short-lived. Since coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, intervening in regional flashpoints from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya. And its democracy, sustained by the aspiration to join the European Union, has given way to one-man rule. Dimitar Bechev traces the political trajectory of Erdoğan's populist regime, from the era of reform and prosperity in the 2000s to the effects of the war in neighboring Syria. In a tale of missed opportunities, Bechev explores how Turkey parted ways with the United States and Europe, embraced Putin's Russia and other revisionist powers, and replaced a frail democratic regime with an authoritarian one. Despite this, he argues that Turkey's democratic instincts are resilient, its economic ties to Europe are as strong as ever, and Erdoğan will fail to achieve a fully autocratic regime"
Away from chaos : the Middle East and the challenge to the West by Gilles Kepel
ISBN: 0231551940

Publication Date: 2020

Away from Chaos is a sweeping political history of the global ramifications of Middle East politics. Starting with Arab nationalism in the postwar era and tracing the international ripple effects of local conflicts in the region up to the present, Kepel has written a clever and easily digestible narrative of long-term chaotic events throughout the Middle East while seamlessly incorporating on-the-ground observations and personal experiences from the politicians and civilians who lived through them. From the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war of 1973 to the aftermath of the various Arab Springs of 2011 to the return of Russian power in the Levant, Away from Chaos seeks to make sense of and weave together the various political threads that run through Middle East politics and ties them to their implications on the larger global stage. With his signature persuasive and lively style, Kepel uses his forty years of experience in the region to create a straightforward chronology of events that traces the causes of tension in the Middle East and the fault lines to emerge as a result of our current actions