There is a great deal of interest in the history of Armenia since its renewed independence in the 1990s and the ongoing debate about the genocide - an interest that informs the strong desire of a new generation of Armenian Americans to learn more about their heritage and has led to greater solidarity in the community. By integrating themes such as war, geopolitics, and great leaders, with the less familiar cultural themes and personal stories, this book will appeal to general readers and travellers interested in the region.

The book is addressed to Armenians in all the world and to readers living in various countries who are interested in ancient history and culture of Biblical Armenia.

The first part of the study discusses the origins of the Armenians, the Urartian Kingdom, Armenia and the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, Sasanid and Byzantine periods. It also examines Christinaity in Armenia and the development of an alphabet and literature. The work then continues with the history of Armenia during the Arab, Turkish and Mongol periods. A separate chapter deals with the history of Cilician Armenia and the Crusades. The second part concentrates on the Armenian communities in the Ottoman, Persian, Indian, and Russian empires (1500-1918). It also details the Armenian diaspora in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, the Arab World, the Far East, and the Americas. The study concludes with lengthy chapters on the history of the three Armenian republics (1918-1920); (1921-1991Soviet Armenia); and the current Armenian republic (1991-2001)

Dadrian, a former professor at SUNY, Geneseo, currently directs a genocide study project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. The present study analyzes the devastating wartime destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as the cataclysmic culmination of a historical process involving the progressive Turkish decimation of the Armenians through intermittent and incremental massacres. In addition to the excellent general bibliography there is an annotated bibliography of selected books used in the study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book covers the history of Armenia from the most ancient literate peoples of Mesopotamia, who had commercial interests in the land of Armenia (c. 2500 BC), to the end of the Middle Ages.

The tale of Armenia has its beginnings as a glorious ancient kingdom, one that commanded the respect of nations as mighty as Egypt and Babylonia. As its history takes a turn for the darker, each chapter reads like a roll call of the most famous of figures: Antony and Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Frederick Barbarossa.

As a new independent Republic of Armenia is established among the ruins of the Soviet Union, Armenians are rethinking their history—the processes by which they arrived at statehood in a small part of their historic homeland, and the definitions they might give to boundaries of their nation. Both a victim and a beneficiary of rival empires, Armenia experienced a complex evolution as a divided or an erased polity with a widespread diaspora. Ronald Grigor Suny traces the cultural and social transformations and interventions that created a new sense of Armenian nationality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perceptions of antiquity and uniqueness combined in the popular imagination with the experiences of dispersion, genocide, and regeneration to forge an Armenian nation in Transcaucasia. Suny shows that while the limits of Armenia at times excluded the diaspora, now, at a time of state renewal, the boundaries have been expanded to include Armenians who live beyond the borders of the republic.

A definitive history of the 20th century's first major genocide on its 100th anniversary Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the twentieth century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent—more than a million people. A century later, the Armenian Genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian interpretations of events. In this definitive narrative history, Ronald Suny cuts through nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to provide an unmatched account of when, how, and why the atrocities of 1915–16 were committed. Drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, this is an unforgettable chronicle of a cataclysm that set a tragic pattern for a century of genocide and crimes against humanity.