The Civil War in Syria: The International Dimension

The Syria Dilemma edited by Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. 272 pp., £12.95 hardcover, 978 026833, $12.95 ebook 978 0262026833

Syria's Uprising and the Fracturing of the Levant by Emile Hokayem. Oxford and New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. 216 pp., $15.99 paperback 978 0415717380

For a conflict with such complexity, importance for international diplomacy and high prominence in news coverage and media discussion, scholarly work on the Syrian conflict has been limited. Scholars on Syria have tended to confine their analysis within relatively narrow academic domains. Many books have merely accounted for the daily events of the uprising, while think tanks have focused on identifying key actors as well as outlining road maps and possible future scenarios of the conflict.