“Understanding ISIS” will be the topic of the Chats with Champions talk by Jonathan Berkey at Skidompha Library at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 26 in the library’s Porter Meeting Hall. Please allow time for parking.

The so-called "Islamic State," or ISIS, is now very much in retreat. Nonetheless, it represents the most ambitious effort by radical elements in the Middle East to establish a viable political entity. To what extent was it really "Islamic"? That is very much a matter of debate. The talk will explore that question, and try to identify the factors which made the "Islamic State" a potent force in the early 21st century by examining the deep historical roots of the movement in regional political developments over the last century, demographic and environmental crisis, religious ideology, and the fallout from the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Although the Islamic State no longer dominates the headlines, the issues that led to its rise are still unresolved. Jonathan Berkey is a historian specializing in Islam and the Middle East. He is currently Professor of International Studies and Professor of History at Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Williams College and his doctorate from Princeton University. Although his research focuses on Islam during the medieval period, he also responds to student interest in modern Islam and teaches courses in Islamic civilization and the Middle East up to the present, including jihad and the Crusades, and nationalism and colonialism in the modern Arab world. He has written several articles and books on Egyptian and Syrian Islam. In 2003 he was given the Albert Hourani Book Award by the Middle Eastern Studies Association for his book, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800.

Berkey worked on his current book, “Shattered Mosaic, the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam,” while on sabbatical last fall in Round Pond. He and his wife Vivien Dietz, also a history professor at Davidson, bought a house there in 2014 and were delighted to find they could work on their writing with breaks for staring out the window at the Maine landscape, going antiquing, and sharing glasses of wine with friends.

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from your national award-winning Skidompha Library, and is sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. For more information call 563-5513 or online at www.skidompha.org