The Middle East is one of the world’s most volatile regions. In recent years, it has presented key international security challenges, from the optimism—and then crushing disappointment—of the Arab uprisings through the rise and fall of the Islamic State. It promises to continue to be a powder keg with the resilient jihadi terror threat, large-scale migration due to warfare and climate change, and fierce competition for control over oil. What ignited this instability?

In his new book, author Gilles Kepel, whom the New York Times called, “France’s most famous scholar of Islam,” offers a persuasive narrative of the long-term causes of tension, weaving together the various threads that run through Middle East politics and tying them to their implications on the global stage.