Customer Reviews

The Modern Middle East: Revised Edition

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This volume represents the revised edition of an old standby of courses on the Modern Middle East and offers a selection of important articles on an array of topics, ranging from Muslim - Non-Muslim relations in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Empire to women's labor to pan-Arabism and political Islam. Most of the articles are very strong and I continue to use many of them when I teach Middle Eastern History. The revised edition, however, hasn't changed tremendously from the original, Oxford edition, published in 1993. Articles on the Middle East since World War II have been added and this is certainly welcome. A more thorough change would have been desirable, however. Many of these articles, some twenty or more years old, seem decidedly dated and recent scholarship has revised many of their findings. Others, like David McDowall's "Dilemmas of the Jewish State" have been overcome by events and either a revised or a different article on the same issue would have been helpful.

In short, this is a useful volume as a classroom supplement to standard textbooks. A broader revision for its new publication would have made it considerably stronger and more valuable.