The Arab World Today: Second Edition

This is a well-written introduction to the intricacies of the modern history of the Arab world. Without a doubt, the Arab world has become an important and hotly contested region during the past century in which many wars were fought and in which the United States is becoming more and more enmeshed. This book traces the origin of the modern-day conflicts and the complex ways by which the Arab world (united at the beginning of the book under the Ottoman Empire) reached the level of fragmentation that characterizes it today. The author is a great dispassionate yet interesting narrator of the many events and plots that effected this change. Polk does a very good job in this book of including a large number of interesting details without losing sight of the big picture. The writing style is so interesting that the 500 pages seemed much shorter. The book further contains many useful maps and tables. "The Arab World Today" is of relevance for more than just the Arab world. For example the description of the process by which Egypt was brought under British occupation due to mounting debt from the construction of the Suez canal, itself a Western project, has many parallels in the third world today, particularly in the US domination of Iraq and in the relationship of the World Bank with most African countries. The book also has an extensive bibliography that I found very useful thanks to the author's comments about every item therein. In such a fast-changing region, this book can benefit from an update. The 5th edition ends with the first Iraq-US war. Obviously much has happened in the Middle East since then. However books about contemporary history can never be complete. Another problem with this book is the author's unhesitating acceptance and use of one-sided terminology. For instance he labels Palestinian freedom fighters in particular as "terrorists" while he labels the freedom fighters of all the other countries studied in the book as "nationalists". This is obviously a judgmental issue and a book striving for objectivity should avoid such irrelevant inflammatory labels.

This is a well-written introduction to the intricacies of the modern history of the Arab world. Without a doubt, the Arab world has become an important and hotly contested region during the past century in which many wars were fought and in which the United States is becoming more and more enmeshed. This book traces the origin of the modern-day conflicts and the complex ways by which the Arab world (united at the beginning of the book under the Ottoman Empire) reached the level of fragmentation that characterizes it today. The author is a great dispassionate yet interesting narrator of the many events and plots that effected this change. Polk does a very good job in this book of including a large number of interesting details without losing sight of the big picture. The writing style is so interesting that the 500 pages seemed much shorter. The book further contains many useful maps and tables. "The Arab World Today" is of relevance for more than just the Arab world. For example the description of the process by which Egypt was brought under British occupation due to mounting debt from the construction of the Suez canal, itself a Western project, has many parallels in the third world today, particularly in the US domination of Iraq and in the relationship of the World Bank with most African countries. The book also has an extensive bibliography that I found very useful thanks to the author's comments about every item therein. In such a fast-changing region, this book can benefit from an update. The 5th edition ends with the first Iraq-US war. Obviously much has happened in the Middle East since then. However books about contemporary history can never be complete. Another problem with this book is the author's unhesitating acceptance and use of one-sided terminology. For instance he labels Palestinian freedom fighters in particular as "terrorists" while he labels the freedom fighters of all the other countries studied in the book as "nationalists". This is obviously a judgmental issue and a book striving for objectivity should avoid such irrelevant inflammatory labels.