The Arabs: A History 1st Edition by Eugene Rogan (PDF)

Description

The internationally bestselling definitive history of the Arab world, named a best book of the year by the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Atlantic — now updated to cover the latest developments in the Middle East In this groundbreaking and comprehensive account of the Middle East, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on five centuries of Arab sources to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context. This landmark book covers the Arab world from North Africa through the Arabian Peninsula, exploring every facet of modern Arab history. Starting with the Ottoman conquests of the sixteenth century, Rogan follows the story of the Arabs through the era of European imperialism and the superpower rivalries of the Cold War to the present age of American hegemony, charting the evolution of Arab identity and the struggles for national sovereignty throughout. In this updated edition, Rogan untangles the latest geopolitical developments of the region. The Arabs is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the modern Arab world.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Never has there been a more necessary time to understand the history of one of the world’s great people, the Arabs, than now. The troubled state of the Middle East, so visible on the front page of every newspaper in the world, is not a lonely era in the long history of the Arabs. Quite the contrary; the Arab world has been long governed and occupied by foreign powers. First, Turkey for centuries ran most of the major countries in the Middle East and then faded from power during the late 19th century, only to be replaced by the British and French. These European powers, accustomed to the organization of their colonies, were ultimately spectacularly unsuccessful in restraining the rapid development of the national states in the Middle East during the 1940’s and 1950’s. The Arabs tells this story with a wonderful sense of pace and shifting momentum; this reader was swept along at an increasing pace as the book neared the present, even more dangerous, time.I found the complexity of the Arab world, with all the strangeness of its magnificent language, to be initially confusing but Professor Rogan helps us along our way through a dense and, to this reader, totally new subject. As the book nears the present day, it becomes more absorbing and urgent. The final section of this very useful book consists of a full discussion of the emergence of the Israeli state and its increasing confrontation with the Arab nations that surround it. The force of the Israeli confrontation grows as the new Jewish state becomes increasingly powerful and self-assured. There is no way to escape the fact that this discussion, such an important part of the book, can be viewed as slanted, either from the Israeli point of view, mindful of the basic reason for the establishment of this remarkable nation: to provide a secure haven for the hunted Jews of Europe in the heart of Judaism’s earliest history, or from the Arab point of view, with the wrenching loss of much of the lands that were called Palestine for the past two millenia.One reads of this conflict with a sense of sorrow for both sides. Nevertheless, the resolution will probably have something to do with the renaissance of Arab learning, industry, charm and intelligence. These are strong societies; their contributions to the knowledge of the world has been extraordinary and it can happen again.I liked this book enormously. It tells of the history of a great people and informs about the present state of affairs in the context of the longest view. It is, in the end, a book of hope.

⭐I learned from Rogan’s sympathetic and well-written history political history of the Arabs, and I am glad to recommend it — but with one small and one more serious reservation. This is a fine historical survey that emphasizes the political organization and dimension of what we now consider “Arab” nations, commencing in roughly 1500 CE up to the present. This is not a history of Arab tribes, of the foundations or development of Islam, or of Arab culture more generally, either contemporary or historical. But what it does, it does very well. Rogan manages the challenge of providing a scholarly account, including much that is original (at least to this non-specialist), while writing in a consistently interesting and readable style — no small thing.The book’s particular strength, I think, is Rogan’s detailed telling of the story from an Arab perspective, drawing from a wide range of Arab sources and with what one reviewer called many “lively vignettes” well-chosen for the light they shed. Perhaps inevitably, this strength is also the source of an arguable weakness, in as much as the strong focus on the Arab perspective at times overstates that view and produces a less-than-balanced picture, especially of more recent history. Although this makes the book less satisfactory as a general history of the region, it seems to me mostly a reasonable trade-off for the benefit gained, and Rogan provides a perspective that I learned from and that many readers will appreciate.My more serious reservation, and I view it as a real defect in Rogan’s historical account, is the almost comprehensive neglect of the political implications (as well as reglious and cultural) of the conflict among Sunni, Shiite and other elements of Islam. Granted that this is an avowedly “political” history, not a theological history, the near-exclusion of this dimension is baffling. It is rather as if one wrote a history of Western Europe between 1500-1800 that mostly ignored the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Catholic/Protestant conflict flowing from these differences, which while reglious in their foundation, but were profoundly political in their consequence. The exclusion of this dimension in Rogan’s treatment is so complete that one presumes it is the result of a considered decision by the author. I decline to speculate on the rationale, but it is much to be regretted.Despite the serious reservation expressed above, I repeat my recommendation: This is both serious scholarly history and a compelling read. I think most readers will benefit from and enjoy Rogan’s book.

⭐Perhaps the best book in print that chronicles the recent history of this most complex and violent regions of the world. The author has not only mastered the facts and events of both geography and history that shaped the region and its people, but understood better than anybody I read, the nuances of its cultures and the psychology of the peoples who live there. Having lived in this part of the world for some 35 years, I could hear the truth and empathetic detachment in his words.I have read through this book once, but I am sure will return to it time and again to seek answers to some of the most perplexing series of crises that befalls that part of the world, and continue to impact us all.

⭐I bought this book for a relative – the feedback is that it is a well researched and well- written book, just as one would expect from such a distinguished author. Furthermore, I am told that it is not too heavy despite the detail it contains. An excellent book!

⭐An outstanding study of a complex people in one of the most complex regions on earth. Authoritative, hones, factual and, surprisingly and without losing its academic vigour, as humanly sympathetic as it could possibly be. I am looking very much forward to reading this book once again, when the new edition appears later this year.

⭐A very good overall history with recent history scoring particularly well. You’ll never look at the Middle East the same way again.

⭐Great, great, great if I didn’t think so I would not give it 5 stars.

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