Middle East Books

Ali Farzat is probably one of the greatest cartoonists in the world today. he would have got way more publicity if he was not an Arab... his work is underrated... i loved this book

This just in from MEMRI - Syria is trying to prevent this book's distribution. Check out Farzat's cartoons in the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan

In this very concise book (only 130 pages), Rubinstein gives the reader a great introduction to the average Palestinian refugee's attachment to the land of Israel. If you want a very easy to read, informative introduction to the attachment of Palestinian refugees to their homes this is the book to read. I highly recommend it!

That this book is out of print is unbelievable to me. It could help so many, today and tomorrow, to understand the Palestinian culture in a way I've never read about in any other book. Mr. Rubinstein is a revered Israeli columnist for Ha'aretz News and acknowledged as the leading Israeli "Arabist". Though his columns are information, this book is truly alive with visual images no where else to be found, with insights so critical for Americans and Israelis. How Random House allowed this timeless book to have only a short shelf life is really astounding and upsetting to me. Try and get it Used and then add your review to mine. You won't be disappointed; this book is a true gem.

The author offers a fantastic view of the Japanese monarchy that is well worth the read. A wonderful historical take on the subject.

Kenneth J. Ruoff is an Associate Professor of Japanese History at Portland State University. Dr. Ruoff is the Director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the university.

Professor Ruoff received the 2004 Jiro Osaragi Commentary Prize for the Japanese translation of his book THE PEOPLE'S EMPEROR. The prize was given at a ceremony at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo January 27, 2005. The prize include an award of two million yen. Dr. Ruoff is the first foreigner to receive the Osaragi Prize.

My history professor claims that this is one book which former students complain about years after having read it. It is dense. There are lots of odd names which run together. It is absolutely not for the casual reader. But I would consider it necessary reading for all scholars of China, Asia, or just history in general. I found it fascinating that the steppe tribes and the various Chinese governments had a not-always unspoken agreement, in which the tribes were essentially allowed to conquer a limited region of China, in exchange for securing trade routes and defending against tribes outside of the system.

Barfield's primary thesis is that the dynamics of Chinese civilization are not intelligible considered in isoloation. Rather, comprehension requires the distinction between Manchurian and Native dynasties and the role that empires of the steppe played in the changes between them.

Of special interest is that by far the best know steppe empire, that of the Mongols under Temujin and his successors, was an anomalous exception to the 2,000 year pattern. Typical steppe empires were interested in extortion (or tribute, or gifts, depending on who tells the story), not direct rule.

If you're a student of Chinese history or of the dynamics of civilizations, read this book. You'll think differently.

Of course, Iran is a volatile land and, even as I write, the state of the land is in flux. After my visit to Iran in 1997, this was one of the few accounts of Iran which truly reiterated and elaborated on the thoughts I had of this Islamic Republic. Insightful, fascinating, and realistic-this book doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Reed's light-footed journalism runs circles around the ponderous television crews of media giants. Visiting Iran repeatedly on a simple quest for understanding, he interviews every sort of person he can - angry unemployed men, film makers, dissident theologians, self-righteous officials, scientists, reflective young women. The product is a respectful, street-smart, entertaining tour of Iran in the post-war, post-revolution 90's. Here's a sample postcard:

"Why the sudden uproar when I climb into the bus? Why are voices shrilling in protest, hands reaching out to jab my shoulder, fingers pointing at chador-clad heads? Why are the expressions on the passengers' faces wavering between indignation and amusement? Strange. The faces are all women's. Slowly, what has happened penetrates my consciousness: obsessed with escaping the omnipresent press of humanity, I have boarded the less crowded women's section. Forbidden zone. Males keep out. Sorry. O so sorry. With mumbled apologies I back out the door and rush chastened to the fore-compartment. No seats here. Nothing but a mass of male bodies crushed up against one another like bruised tangerines in a crate. The women are seated at the back, gazing imperturbably, primly now, out the windows. I catch a man's eye. His expression is one of resignation mixed with sympathy, as if to say: `This is Iran'." (p. 143)

Petra is like no other city on earth. It is one of the most mysterious, fascinating and beautiful of all the ancient Biblical sites. Known in the Scriptures as ""Selah"", during the time of Abraham, it is situated in the mountains of Seir-the land of the Edomites.

So perfectly concealed among the rose-red cliffs of Edom, this amazingly well preserved city of Petra remained lost and almost forgotten for over a thousand years. Nestled in a craggy canyon of red, pink, white, brown and violet rock, the city is practically invisible from the air and impregnable from the ground. The natural caves that honeycomb the area were home to man thousands of years before history began.

The very memory of the great and mighty city was lost, its situation completely forgotten, and it became a legend of mystery and wonder. Explorers tried in vain to find its fabled glories. But, due to the utter inaccessibility of Petra's rocky vastness and the wild nature of the few inhabitants of the surrounding district, its entrance was kept secret for centuries.

Once Petra had been discoverd it was inevitable that it should be a focus of study. From beneath the shifting sands that cover ancient Petra has emerged evidence that has shed light on the city and its people. These people are woven intermittently across the pages of the Bible.

On the pages of this engrossing book, the author presents a brief review of the history and peoples of a city spoken of by the prophet Ezekial: ""Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O Mount Seir, I am aganist thee, and will stretch out mine hand aganist thee, and will make thee most desolate."" (Ezekial 35:3)

This book is well written, E Raymond Capt's knowlegde about Petra and how it came about and ultimate desolation is amazing. Capt almost makes you feel as if you were there, seeing this land that was lost, for yourself. Capt's ability to combine science and biblical knowledge is far better than I could have ever thought. Overall, this book is just like Capt's other works, a great read, thats easy to follow and understand, that your sure to enjoy it. I highly recommend this book.

I am a traveller from Madrid and was given this book as a gift by a friend from Manila. It was full of everything a traveller who is unfamiliar with an exotic country like the Philippines. When I went there with several friends last year we found the book to be extremely helpful and so accurate in detail that we had an easy time moving around, finding hotels and site-seeing areas. To the authors: thank you for a very relaxing trip to the Philippines!

We were being assigned to the Philippines and I browsed through all the travel books available on the country. I chose this (the first edition) because i liked the way it was written and that the writers live in the Philippines. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed! In fact i found both the information provided and the personalized descriptions of places to stay and eat very helpful. When the second edition came out i bought it and passed on my old copy to a friend. The 2nd edition has new information (unlike others that i have found are almost completely re-writes of past editions) and continues to be a more personal travel guide. I will be sorry to leave the country and this book has helped my family enjoy our travels.

My compliments to Professor Amanat on this incredible book on the reign of Nasir al- Din Shah Qajar of Iran. What a refreshing new look on this Qajar ruler. Although Professor Amanat's book concentrates on the first half of Nasir al-Din's monarchy, his work is of great historical and academic value to Iranian history. Since the dawn of the Pahlavi Dynasty in the 1920's, Nasir al-Din has always been presented in a vacuum, by a resume style listing of events in his political career. These highlights of Nasir al-Din Shah's monarchy have shaped the popular understanding of this ruler. Most importantly, the killing of, Mirza Taqi Farahani (Amir Kabir), his disliked mother (Malik Jahan, Mahd `Ulya), Nuri, his unpopular premier, the Herat military campaign, the Anglo-Iranian War, the Babi suppression (Baha-i Koshi), foreign intervention in domestic affairs, obsession with Malijak (Aziz-al- sultan), the tobacco concession, and his assassination in 1896. In this book, we finally get to understand Nasir al-Din by learning about his childhood, his world, and his time.

What one learns from reading Professor Amanat's book is that ruling Persia during the age of Europe's Imperial expansion, industrialization, and modernization, Nasir al-Din was able to prove himself quite effectively as an astute diplomat. What he lacked in military might, he made up for in diplomatic wit, playing the great powers against one another (namely Britain and Russia). What has never been acknowledged about him prior to this book is that he fared quite well in his attempt to assure Iranian territorial integrity and independence (preventing the partitioning of Iran).

Professor Amanat does not in any way put Nasir al-Din at par with Peter the Great, Nadir Shah, or Napoleon. He simply fills the vacuum surrounding the psyche, environment, and the character of this King, and presents the reader with a fresh new look on the Nasir-i era. This book is objective and focused on preserving history. It has not re-written history, it has contributed to it greatly. Having read this book, I still do not believe Nasir al-Din was by any measure a great king. In fact his religious beliefs, rooted in predestination, repeatedly resigned him to accept that which was quite unacceptable. Nasir al-Din's personal hero, Peter the Great of Russia, was never as docile as he was. Peter reformed, built, and strengthened his country, while Nasir al-Din Shah, at best, preserved the status quo. As for his capital modernization attempts, the introduction of the telegraph, the purchasing of the four cannon ship Persepolis, and the five mile long railway from Tehran to Shah `Abd al-`Azim, were too little for a reign of 48 years to win him great praise. Great reform at times of weakness is indeed a historical possibility. Peter The Great of Russia set such an example prior to Nasir al-Din, as well as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, two decades after him. Change is facilitated through effective leadership. Let us never forget the praise given to Ataturk when it was written that "the will of the believer, become the creator of miracles."

I recommend Professor Amanat's book highly to anyone interested in history, biography, or nineteenth century imperialism. I give his book five GIANT stars and hope that the professor writes another book covering the second half of Nasir al-Din's reign.

Such insight and dedication to perfection is difficult to find. This is a fascinating book on the life of a Qajar Monarch that ruled Persia for one half of the 19th century. You will learn a great deal about how the era of industrial colonialism pushed an otherwise mighty and ancient empire into a defensive position that just keeping the nation in one piece became a major accomplishment. The life of the Nassir Al-Din Shah Qajar is so well depicted in this book that you live in 19th century Iran while reading it. A scholarly work of history by Professor Amanat that is a true contribution to Middle Eastern, Russian, and British History.

I sent for this book because of my interest in knowing more about the Balfour Declaration than just that it opened a possibility for a Jewish homeland. In this thoroughgoing and apparently fair book I found so many parallels with our situation in Iraq that I abstracted it. It is packed with many interesting and important details that make the book emminently readable and lay bare the roots of the enduring Arab-Israeli confrontation.

This book is a well-written and detailed history of the British mandate rule of Palestine (1920-1947). She is a careful historian who supports her prose with ample references. The tale she tells is a sad one and chronicles the systematic colonial expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Some British were even-handed but the weight of Ms. Shepherd's evidence demonstrates a bias against the Arabs. This is a most timely book because of the continuing struggle of the Palestinians for a fair deal. The facts presented should be considered by Israeli negotiators involved in the so-called "peace process".

Christian Zionism, a variant of Christian fundamentalism, is today a major global force to reckon with. Christian Zionists are a key player in American (and to a lesser extent, Western European) politics. Firm backers of Zionism, Israel and Israeli expansionism, they are also one of the principal fountainheads of Islamophobia on the global scence. The origins, development and politics of Christian Zionism are brought out in considerable detail in this well-researched, balanced and very timely book by the noted activist scholar Dan Cohn-Sherbook, himself a Jew, and Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales.

Approximately a tenth of the American population is a devoted member of the cult of Christian Zionism, the author observes. `It is the fastest growing religious movement in Christianity today', he notes (p.xi). Many followers of the cult are from the middle and upper-middle classes, followers of televangelists who wield enormous political and economic clout. Christian Zionists are impelled by an imperialistic vision, of Jesus' impending arrival on earth, when he shall, so they believe, wipe out all his enemies (all non-Christians, presumably) and establish his global dominion, with his capital at Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Christian Zionists believe that they, as allegedly God's chosen people, will be spared the horrors of the global war that shall precede Jesus' advent, and will be miraculously wafted up to heaven, where they shall watch the final destruction of the world.

Christian Zionists believe that Jesus can only return the world once the Jews colonise Palestine. This belief is based on the contentious claim that God had granted this land to the progeny of Abraham, through Isaac, that is the Jews, for eternity. This land is not restricted to the present borders of the state of Israel. Instead, Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, believe that a vast swathe of land, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, today inhabited by millions of Arab Muslims and Christians, belongs rightfully to the Jews, and so must be ethnically `cleansed' of non-Jewish presence. Hence the justification they offer for their genocidal project aimed at the Arabs. Hence, too, their consistent backing to Israel, their generous funding of Jewish settlements in Palestine, and their enormous pressure on successive American governments to adopt rigorously pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian policies.

The author traces the origins of Christian Zionism to the changing attitude of Christian groups towards the Jews following the Protestant Revolution. The early Catholic Church justified the witch-hunt of the Jews, labeling them as alleged Christ-killers. However, numerous Protestant sects, while equally vehemently anti-Jewish, believed that the Jews needed to colonise Palestine before Jesus would re-appear in the world to save it. This was, and still is, by no means a generous acceptance of the Jews. Rather, they believed, as Christian Zionists today do, that only those Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah would be saved. The rest would ally themselves with the Anti-Christ and would be defeted by Jesus and his forces and, consequently, would be sent off to eternal damnation in the fires of hell.

From the seventeenth century onwards, the author shows, numerous European, and, later American, Protestant churches began evolving schemes to settle the Jews in Palestine. This was also seen as a convenient way of getting rid of the Jewish presence in Europe. They petitioned various European powers to back this scheme. By the early nineteenth century, numerous British administrators had been won round to this idea, impelled, no doubt, also by a motive to undermine the Ottoman Empire, which at that time controlled Palestine, and by a deep-rooted aversion to Islam.

Increasingly, the author shows, Christian Zionists began to join hands with secular Jewish Zionists, whose plans to settling Jews in Israel had nothing to do with any messianic hopes, but, rather, arose as a response to the centuries'-old persecution of Jews by European Christians. (In contrast, the author rightly notes, `In Arab lands, Jews had flourished for centuries [...] [while] in European countries Jewry had been subject to oppression and persecution' (p.44).

Ties between secular Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists to pursue the common project of Jewish colonization of Palestine, the author writes, were strengthened by the support given to Theodore Herzl (b.1860), the Hungarian Jew who is regarded as the father of modern-day Zionism. The author traces the course of this close collaboration down to the present-day, describing the strong political and financial links between Christian and Israeli/Jewish Zionists and also the enormous clout of the Zionist lobby in American political circles.

The author clearly indicates that Christian Zionism, based on a virulently anti-Islamic agenda, is a major hurdle to peace not just in West Asia but globally, too. Indeed, some Christian Zionists even ardently wish (and work for) a final global war, in the belief that this would accelerate their hoped-for wafting up to heaven and the subsequent arrival of Jesus. At the same time, and this gives some cause for hope, the author also discusses critiques of the Zionist imperialist project by progressive Christian and Jewish groups and also by orthodox Jewish Rabbis, who are opposed to Zionism on the grounds that, as the author puts it, `It [is] forbidden to accelerate divine redemption through human efforts'.

This compelling work provides valuable insight on the history of Zionism, religion in America and American foreign policy. The book consists of 4 parts:

HERE I AM which examines the Herzl/Hechler paradigm. Merkley starts with the historic meeting between Theodor Herzl and William Hechler that took place on 10 March 1896. This marked the beginning of co-operation between Herzlian & Christian Zionism, when Hechler sought out Herzl just a few days after the publication of The Jewish State. The British evangelical pamphleteer Hechler enabled Herzl to meet with powerful European leaders. This ultimately led to the Balfour Declaration, The British Mandate and the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.

The book is more than just dry history, as Merkley explores the personalities of the two protagonists and draws parallels with the political situation today as regards support for Israel and relations between Christian Zionists, Israelis and American Jews. For a most humorous take on the current situation, I highly recommend A Match Made in Heaven by Zev Chafets. The sophisticated Viennese journalist Herzl was completely secular whilst his helper was a pious Christian. Although non-religious, Herzl was superstitious and noticed a series of strange coincidences as he pursued his quest. And before his death, he related to Reuben Brainin a wonderful numinous dream that he had about Messiah and Moses when he was a boy of 12 years old.

THE CYRUS CONNECTION encompasses the roots of PhiloSemitism in Britain, its failure in Germany, and its success in the UK and the USA via William Blackstone, Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. This part deals extensively with the Puritans and the way Puritanism later gave rise to Dispensationalist theology and Restorationism. In 1891 William Blackstone wrote a petition to President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of State James Blaine requesting them to call an international conference to consider the claims of the "Israelites" for a national homeland in the Levant. This petition was signed by 413 prominent people including the speaker of the House of Representatives, the chief justice of the Supreme Court plus influential journalists, writers, clergymen and industrialists.

RALLYING THE ZIONISTS deals with the efforts of Christian Zionists to influence public opinion. This work proceeded through the Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations and into that of Roosevelt. The role of people like Emanuel Neuman, Stephen Wise, Charles Edward Russell, A Ben Elias, William Hard and William R Hopkins, and the activities of organizations like the Zionist Association of America, Pro-Palestine Federation of America and America Palestine Committee are examined here. There is also some interesting information on the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in chapter 12: the American Zionist Emergency Council and the Christian Zionists.

Part Four: I AM CYRUS chronicles the close relations between Jewish and Christian Zionists that contributed to the creation of the State of Israel by covering the issue of Palestine during the war, the final years of the Roosevelt administration, President Truman and his friendship with Eddie Jacobson who played such a crucial role in Truman's recognition of Israel on 14 May 1948. Merkley points out that this action was well within the tradition of Christian Restorationism. The book concludes with notes, a bibliography and index.

In this informative and highly readable work, Merkley reveals how the Christian Zionism of today goes back more than a hundred years with even older roots in the Puritans in England in the 1600s. The same holds for differences of opinion within the movement as well as its relations with the Jewish community. For example, Hechler did not believe in proselytizing whilst Blackstone did. And just like then, the Jewish response today is mixed, with Abe Foxman of the ADL as example of those who distrust the motives of Christian Zionists.

More contemporary information on the politics of Christian Zionism is available in Standing With Israel by David Brog and Merkley's Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel whilst In Defense of Israel by John Hagee is a clear manifesto of the movement's support for the Jewish state. Informative books on the theology of Christian Zionism include The Mountains of Israel by Norma Archbold Parrish, Ruth & Esther by Frank Morgan and Why Care about Israel? by Sandra Teplinsky.