Christopher Phillips’s brilliant analysis of the factors fueling the Syria war is a refreshing contrast to works by ostensible but ill-informed experts.

Ben Ehrenreich’s The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine chronicles the daily humiliations and acts of resistance to Israeli occupation of one extended family in the West Bank.

Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere.

The bombing campaign in Syria will not defeat the Islamic State. Yet nothing would turn Iraqis and Syrians to the jihadis more quickly than a Western invasion.

Four million Syrians are now refugees in neighboring countries. That is almost six times greater than the number who fled Palestine, and whose plight reshaped the modern Middle East. The legacy of Syria’s refugee disaster awaits.