Tag: books

Six (make that seven) greatest stories ever told about the Middle East

On By Martin Kramer

On Facebook, I ran a series listing the most influential modern books on the Middle East (in the English language). I selected each not on the basis of quality, but my rough assessment of a book’s impact on readers and politics, short-term and long. It’s rather rare for a book on the Middle East to have much of an influence in America and Britain; at most times, it’s a marginal region. But events have propelled a few books into the limelight, and these six, for better or worse, had an impact, influenced perceptions, and may have changed history.

Arabia of Lawrence


Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (1926). I rather like Charles Hill’s depiction of Lawrence as someone “who wrote himself into history as a fictional character leading Arab tribes in revolt against the Ottoman Turks.” (Hill calls the book “a novel traveling under the cover of autobiography.”) But the book lives, and is even said to have inspired U.S. counter-insurgency theorists in Iraq.

Arise, ye Arabs!


The Arab Awakening by George Antonius (1938). This purported exposé of British double-dealing provided all the pretext that Britain needed to retreat from its support for the Jewish National Home in Palestine, culminating in the 1939 White Paper. The British commander of forces in Palestine in 1946 said he kept the book “on my bedside table.” It also became the bible of American sympathizers of Arab nationalism. “We had our revered texts,” wrote the American Arabist Malcolm Kerr, “such as The Arab Awakening.” It has been refuted on many grounds, but while its influence doesn’t endure, it lingers.

God Gave This Land…


Exodus by Leon Uris (1958). Recently I asked a class of grad students in Mideast studies whether they’d heard of it, and I didn’t get a single nod. But this fictionalized account of Israel’s founding was said to have been the biggest seller since Gone with the Wind, propelled by a blockbuster motion picture starring Paul Newman. The novel, confessed journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, “set me, and many others, on a course for aliyah, and it made American Jews proud of Israel’s achievements. On the other hand, it created the impression that all Arabs are savages.” Arabs have been searching for their equivalent of Exodus ever since.

Snake Charmer


Orientalism by Edward Said (1978). Sigh… I suppose “baneful” is the best adjective. No book has done more to obscure the Middle East, and impart a sense of guilt to anyone who has had the audacity to represent it. The French scholar Jacques Berque (praised by Said) put it succinctly: Said had done “a disservice to his countrymen in allowing them to believe in a Western intelligence coalition against them.” But the book gave rise to a cottage industry in Western academe, and helped tilt the scales in academic appointments. Its influence may be waning, but it’s still on syllabi everywhere.

Fit to Print and Reprint


From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (1989). It spent nearly twelve months on the New York Times bestseller list and won the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction. Coming in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon war and the 1987 intifada, it captured the “falling-out-of-love-with-Israel” mood, although it cut no slack for the Arabs either. Friedman has said he keeps threatening to bring out a new edition with this one-line introduction: “Nothing has changed.”

How the East Was Lost


What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis (2002). The book appeared in the aftermath of 9/11, and it rocketed to the New York Times bestseller list, where it spent 18 weeks. Lewis used his broad historical repertoire to explain “why they hate us.” (In a word: resentment, at failed modernization and an absence of freedom.) Lewis later summarized his view thus: “Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us.” Some in Washington took him literally.

Nakba Validation


At a reader’s suggestion, I’m adding a seventh book to my list. It’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-49 (1988) by Benny Morris. Drawing on Israeli archives, Morris did what no Palestinian Arab historian had managed to do: (partially) validate the Nakba narrative. The book confirmed Israel’s “original sin” in the eyes of the Israeli left, and persuaded Palestinians (wrongly) that Israel might compromise on the “right of return.” Neither the criticism by Efraim Karsh, nor the political swerves of Morris himself, could mitigate the book’s political impact.

This doesn’t exhaust the list of books about the Middle East that made the New York Times bestseller list or won the admiration of scholars. That bibliography would be much longer (and some years ago, I myself put together a different list, of choice scholarly works). But for sheer influence in the longer term, I don’t see another book that deserves inclusion in this club. If you have other ideas, share them at this link on Facebook.

You say Hourani, I say Ajami, let’s call the whole thing off

On By Martin Kramer

Back in the fall, Garth Hall, a grad student and research assistant at the American University in Cairo, sent an email to 202 professors of Middle Eastern studies. Hall asked them to “jot down what you think are the ten most interesting, informative, and readable nonfiction books in the last century of Middle East studies… And if you could, please write one sentence on why you chose the book you did for your first choice.” (Details here.)

Of those queried, 52 responded, and so did I. Having skimmed Hall’s instructions, I forgot them when I got around to the chore: I thought he wanted ten books, in no particular order, and a comment on each. Maybe that’s why I don’t see my name on the list of respondents: I disqualified myself by not making a top choice. In any case, here’s my list in alphabetical order by author, with my original comment on each book. I did this in a hurry, and I wouldn’t fight to the death for every choice, but the list gives an idea of the approach that I value. (Caveat: I kept to books on modern history and politics. Otherwise I’d have filled up quickly with Oleg Grabar on Islamic art, S.D. Goitein on medieval Egypt, André Raymond on the Ottoman city—for starters.)

  • The Arab Predicament by Fouad Ajami. Still the most eloquent and precise account of the impasse of Arab nationalism since independence.
  • Islam in European Thought by Albert Hourani. Hourani wrote bad books but elegant essays, and these are some of his best, on a theme he knew best.
  • Sayyid Jamal ad-din al-Afghani by Nikki R. Keddie. The ideal biography, masterful use of sources, correcting a hundred myths.
  • The Chatham House Version by Elie Kedourie. I constantly reread these essays, which turn assumptions about nationalism and imperialism on their heads.
  • Muslim Extremism in Egypt by Gilles Kepel. Pioneering on-the-ground reportage that preceded all accounts of Islamism and has yet to be surpassed.
  • The Arab Cold War by Malcolm H. Kerr. No one had a better feel for the cut-and-thrust of inter-Arab politics.
  • The Emergence of Modern Turkey by Bernard Lewis. Essential to understanding the late Ottoman period and the early Turkish republic.
  • Cruelty and Silence by Kanan Makiya. Treason of the Arab intellectuals, exposed meticulously and passionately.
  • A House of Many Mansions by Kamal S. Salibi. The best account (in essays) of the persistence of primordial identities.
  • Nasser and His Generation by P.J. Vatikiotis. Nasser’s Egypt thoroughly revealed, at a time when other scholars engaged in social science obfuscation.

So much for my choices. Here are the first ten results of the survey, in descending order of preference—and to make it more interesting, I offer an irreverent aside on each selection.

There are another eleven books on the list, but the sample isn’t large enough for any of these choices to mean much. The same goes for an additional list of thirteen runners-up. (Do note this, however: nothing by Rashid Khalidi made the cut.)

Of course, a few fatal problems with the methodology and sample size render the survey worthless, so Garth Hall promises to do it again, presumably in a more systematic manner. No matter how many times he repeats it, two things are certain: Said’s Orientalism will come out on top, and my Ivory Towers on Sand won’t be anywhere in sight.

Update: Check out Robert Irwin’s best ten. Three of his choices overlap those in the survey.