The contributions to this volume are based on papers read at an international confer ence held in Hamburg in May 1978. Some of them are reprinted in their original form, others have been slightly modified in order to incorporate more recent findings. Since the overall concern is Middle Eastern development the various contributions deal with a wide range of problems. Studies on the Middle East are more often than not one-sided because of the pre dominating interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the economic factors relating to the supply of oil. At the Hamburg Conference, however, the participants concentrated main lyon examining such aspects of the situation as are far too often relegated to the side lines. In order to illustrate what those neglected topics are one should refer to two major examples: 1) the religio-cultural identity of Arabs and Israelis, 2) the tackling of political issues in Arab and Israeli literature.

The Contemporary Middle East provides an accessible introduction to the region s most pressing concerns and enduring conflicts. It includes provocative contributions by an impressive array of leading scholars, journalists, and policy advisors. Contributors include notable academic authors Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., the late William L. Cleveland, Shibley Telhami, David W. Lesch, Bernard Reich, and Phebe Marr, complemented by selections from recent general-interest books by Marwan Bishara, Mark Perry, and Eugene Rogan, among others. With twelve new chapters, the third edition is a probing examination of the current affairs of the Middle East. Its multiple readings on strategic pairings of topics (Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq and Iran, Egypt and Syria) illuminate the region s key issues from a variety of perspectives. Part- and chapter-opening summaries help establish background and context, and a new concluding chapter by Shibley Telhami, written specifically for this volume, candidly addresses fundamental questions about the United States and the Middle East today. Student resources include an annotated table of contents, a select bibliography, a glossary, brief biographies of notable persons, a chronology, and a summary of recent events, in addition to numerous maps.

With this major revision of his classic The Middle East and the West (1964), a leading Middle East historian of our time offers a definitive and now more-timely-than-ever history of Western-Middle Eastern relations from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Fully revised to cover the volatile developments of the last three decades, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East sheds light on the climax and sudden end of the cold war, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Arab-Israeli wars, the formation and activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iranian revolution. Illuminating the region's geography, culture, history, language, and religion, Lewis explores the complex and often confusing issues of Arab nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and responses and reactions in the Middle East to centuries of Western influence, revealing the subtlety and sophistication of this dynamic civilization as no other scholar can.

This book explores Muslims' conception of themselves as "the people of the book" and explains the multifaceted meanings of this concept. Published jointly with the Library of Congress, it is an illustrated history of the book and the written word in the Islamic world.

The Middle East, a few decades ago, was seen to be an autonomous subsystem of the global international political system. More recently, the region has been subordinated to the hegemony of a singular superpower, the US, bolstered by an alliance with Israel and a network of Arab client states. The subordination of the contemporary Middle East has resulted in large part from the disappearance of countervailing forces, for example, global bipolarity, that for a while allowed the Arab world in particular to exercise a modicum of flexibility in shaping its international relations.The aspirations of the indigenous population of the Middle East have been stifled by the dynamics of the unequal global power relationships, and domestic politics of the countries of the region are regularly subordinated to the prerogatives of international markets and the strategic competition of the great powers. Employing the concept of imperialism, defined as a pattern of alliances between a center (rulers) in the Center (developed) country and a center (client regime) in the Periphery (underdeveloped country) - as an overall framework to analyse the subordination of the region, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of the Middle East, International Relations, and Politics in general.

In this completely updated sixth edition, Peretz offers a comprehensive introduction to the history, politics, and contemporary life of the Middle East. This is the book for those who have little or no previous academic background to the region. Since its initial publication in 1963, this definitive survey has been widely acclaimed and frequently used in history and political science classes. As with previous editions, this volume offers a basic understanding of the forces that shape life and politics in Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States, and is up to date through the September 1993 Israeli-P.L.O. accords.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.