"Nearest East offers a fascinating interpretation of American millenarian and Christian Zionist ideas in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East. Kieser considers the role of American Protestant missionaries as mediators of American influence in the region. He demonstrates a powerful command of the histories of the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, the Armenians, and the United States, as well ... Read moreas the fields of Christian and Islamic studies and biblical studies. Kieser does an excellent job of showing how fluctuating and sometimes inconsistent premillennial and postmillennial Christian ideas affected American missionary policy (and, after World War I, U.S. diplomatic policy) toward Asia Minor and later Palestine and Israel. Likewise, his description of the Armenian situation is particularly vivid and should stimulate important debate." -Heather J. Sharkey, Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire Show Less