Middle East Books

There are very few contributions to the literature of economic development which bring a totally unique approach to analyze the issues facing a developing economy. Instead of a traditional "economic factors can explain all" hypthesis this book adopts a multi-discipinary approach combining economic and non-economic factors in explaining the Pakistan paradox i.e. high growth rates with poor social developoment.Those who are interested in going beyond simplisitic prescriptions will find this book extremely illuminating. For those who wish to learn about Pakistan and Muslim countries in general this book is a must reading.

The book provides an incisive review of the issues and challenges facing Pakistan's economy on the eve of next millennium, and proposes a rich agenda of changes needed. This is done in the socio-political context of the country and the system of governance, recognizing that economic policy formulation or implementation is deeply rooted in the system of governance. Typically, books on the economy of any country, Pakistan or others, are confined to the tedious chronology and analysis of economic events, sprinkled with a few standard policy prescriptions, which is beyond the attention span of common readers. What makes this book an interesting reading is its underlying theme, that in developing countries like Paksitan, economic progress is simply not a matter of policy formulation. Instead, their success is inextricably intertwined with the institutional processes essential to their implementation and follow-up. In Pakistan, as the book traces out, there has been no dearth of policy formulation or policy advice over the years. From time to time various expert groups were commissioned, but their recommendations are piled up in a mound of massive reports without much progress to show for all the efforts made. Recognizing this, the author goes beyond the routine format of economic reportage and elaborates on the system of governance. The book points out how an elite group consisting of the landed aristocracy, the army, the senior bureaucracy, and a select few rich and resourceful families have kept their stranglehold throughout much of the rather turbulent history of Pakistan. It details how the system of governance has been compromised to sustain the rule of this elite group, and how the organs of government have been shaped or reshaped to this end. It shows how the existing political system has disenfranchised several parts of the Pakistani society giving rise to social unrest and upheavals; and why a large number of the young and educated are turning to protests and violence. Further, the book shows how the leading institutions of the country in critical areas like education and the judiciary have been systematically eroded away from within. The book shows that Pakistan faces rather daunting challenges of rebuilding a society that would be in harmony with the needs of 21st century and outlines an agenda essential to achieve economic and social progress.

Tim Stanley is one of the world's authorities on Islamic art and his depth of knowledge enhances this visually stunning book. Created as a catalogue to accompany a traveling exhibition by the same name that visited the United States in 2004, the myriad works included in this fascinating volume are from the Victoria and Albert Museum, perhaps the finest collection of artifacts and art from the Middle East.

Though many readers will be familiar with the mosques and minarets decorated with the complex geometric designs that have graced art and culture books for years, of greater interest are the 'unknown aspects' of Islamic art. Here are reproduction photographs of astrological clocks, objects of art in ceramics and lusterware, wondrous carpets and the variations of the patterns and designs so important to art history, as well as pages of calligraphy and Arabic scripts.

In a time when controversy shrouds appreciation of Islamic culture, this book becomes even more important in broadening our knowledge and appreciation of a culture and world of art too little known to us. Recommended. Grady Harp, December 05

Magnificent Islamic art from the Victoria and Albert Museum is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition, "Palace and Mosque," is a spiritual experience of stunningly beautiful art-- worth a return trip to see again. The book accompanying the exhibition-- with its delicious array of high-resolution, photographic reproductions-- reveals the full splendor of Islamic art as it offers a perpetual feast for the eye.

An amazing up to date account on the history of the israeli palestinian conflict, albeit a fat fat book!

There have been flashier histories of Israel's war of independence and longer ones, but none as well informed, more sensible, and more compelling that Gelber's magisterial account. Making full use of the archives and blending them into a lively account, he provides enough specifics to make the hostilities come alive without ever bogging down in detail. He also dismisses with grace and ease the "particularly irritating" work of the self-styled New Historians, which he finds "one-sided and incomplete." The book's only defect is being published in a limited edition and at a vastly too-high price; let's hope an inexpensive paperback follows soon.

Gelber argues that the first phase of the war began just one day after the United Nations decision to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947 and continued through to the British retreat on May 15, 1948. During that half-year, a civil war took place within the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine, with the British not willing to expend lives to stop it. The Zionists won this round with an ease that astounded them almost as much as the Arabs, an ease which Gelber attributes not to their greater martial abilities but to the vast infrastructural superiority they enjoyed. He also makes the interesting point that the voluntary Arab flight from the contested areas fit into a cultural pattern; historically by-standers to the wars of their rulers, the farmers and townspeople escaped the hostilities temporary, then returned when the fighting ended. But Zionists came out of a Europe context in which abandoning the land was tantamount to forfeiting it.

The second round began with the Arab armies' invasion on May 15. Those armies were almost as ill-prepared for fighting as the Palestinians had been and, like them, were soundly defeated, with shuddering consequences for all the regimes involved. But don't be satisfied with this potted version - read the full version Gelber so capably recounts in Palestine 1948.

I've walked in Israel and the West Bank before the Intifadas, before the barriers, and subsequently tried to make some sense of the mistakes and the historical horror show that has occurred. I think that the Arabic term "al Naqba", the catastrophe, truly best states what has happened, and what continues for all those who live there.
For everyone who shares the author's love of the land or has any respect for human dignity, this book will make you despair over the tragedy of it all.
Some books on the subject have challenged me, all have upset me, but none have effected me as viscerally as these personal ruminations on the irretrievable loss of the landscape itself.
It's beautifully written. Read it and weep.

I have just made arrangements to go to Palestine and experience walks in Palestine in the midst of a brutal occupation! This is how powerful this book!

McDowall did a great job listing the facts of Palestinian history. He showed how false the Zionist claims are of "land with no people for people with no land", and brilliantly analyzed the causes and effects of the Palestinian dispossession and "expulsion" of their land. He listed the facts and figures associated with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and leading to the Palestinian Diaspora and fight for freedom. Great work.

McDowall did a great job listing the facts of Palestinian history. He showed how false the Zionist claims are of "land with no people for people with no land", and brilliantly analyzed the causes and effects of the Palestinian dispossession and "expulsion" of their land. He listed the facts and figures associated with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and leading to the Palestinian Diaspora and fight for freedom. Great work.

This book is a must read. I was always taught that Rome was the only civilised power in the world, and that never made sense to me. But Collins shows how a nation called Parthia which is apart of the Ten Tribes of Israel riviled Rome in greatness and strength and how the Bible and Parthia have a connection not only culture but also of belifes. I've never heard of Parthia before this book, not even in my collage corses. This book is a must read!

Author: Steven M. Collins

Although little-known to modern readers, the ancient kingdom of Parthia played a key role in historical and Biblical events. In this book, exciting new research is presented proving a Semitic-Israelite connection and even a link to King David within the Parthian royal family.

The names of Israelite tribes and clans are in evidence, and Parthia's first capital city was named after "Isaac." Another surprise: the cover of the book shows a cutaway diagram of an ancient Parthian direct current battery. A number of these batteries have been found, and this book documents the sensational discovery of electricity and examines its possible ancient uses.

Some of the events of Jesus Christ's life become more understandable when they are examined in light of the politics that prevailed between Rome and Parthia at that time. One group of Parthian elites that chose Parthia's emperors was called the "Magi" or "Wise Men." A delegation of these high Parthian officials worshipped the young Jesus.

This exciting story is told with the aid of over 100 maps, charts, and illustrations. Very well researched by historian and writer, Steven M. Collins, with 16 pages of appendices.

This is truly a book you will find hard to set down.
Paperback
256 pages

This magnificent out-of-print book reveals many insights into Saigon's final days. Herrington was there, in Saigon the last several years until the last day. He spoke fluent Vietnamese; he knew the Vietnamese, ally and enemy. He felt the betrayal and tried to get as many out of Saigon as he could. Herrington's famous last words to the Vietnamese trying to to board the last choppers, "Khong co ai se bi bo lai" or "No one will be left behind." He meant that and by 1983, long before anyone (minus the CIA's Frank Snepp) had written about Saigon's collapse, had penned this magnificent book. It should be republished so that Americans and Vietnamese expatriates can understand why South Vietnam was lost thirty years ago.

The preface of Stuart Herrington's first memoir, "Stalking the Vietcong", relates the mood of the country in 1961: exhilarated, optimistic, omnipotent. He quotes Kennedy's inaugural, which included the pledge to "bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty". In "Peace With Honor?", his elegiac second memoir, we see the awful damage such grandiose promises can wreak.

Of course, any of the Cubans stranded without air support at the Bay of Pigs could have told the Vietnamese that some burdens were too heavy for the US to bear. Arthur Schlesinger explains in "A Thousand Days" how JFK didn't want to turn world opinion against his administration by supporting the invasion. That was a quick decision. In Richard Shultz' new book he details JFK's efforts to wage a covert war against Hanoi and still remain within the boundaries of all the international treaties. In other words, he decided to stop the North secretly, so as to maintain his honor--a less quick decision, but a decision all the same.

By the time of the fall of Saigon, the very notion of honor in Vietnam had become a little more than a source of bitter jokes. "Peace With Honor?" refers to President Nixon's version of honor in Vietnam, the Paris Peace Agreement. The question mark is added, I presume, because of the way Hanoi "honored" the agreement, and the way America enforced it. A ceasefire was declared, the Americans withdrew, the North regrouped, and attacked, and overran the South. "Peace With Honor?" is the final chapter of the tale that began with the pledge to "bear any burden". After fifteen long years the burden of Vietnam had become too heavy. A friend had to be betrayed and abandoned.

Herrington is unique in my experience with writers on Vietnam in that he knows the language. The Halberstams and the Karnows and the McNamaras have poured an ocean of words into explanations and perspectives of the war, but it all seems a little abstract next to Herrington's personal accounts. I doubt whether you can understand a culture or its problems, much less solve them, unless you speak to its people, and you can't speak to its people unless you know their language. Imagine trying to liberate France from the Nazis with no French speakers on your team. It could have been done, but would been much harder. Probably half the people in the Roosevelt administration knew some French. I wonder whether there was even one person in the Kennedy or Johnson or Nixon administrations that spoke Vietnamese.

"Peace With Honor?" then, is a portrait of the Vietnamese people, not just the southerners but those from the north as well, people from Hanoi and Saigon as well as peasants from the countryside. There is the heart-rending story of an 18-year-old boy drafted and killed in a few days, because his family elects not to pay off the conscription sergeant. There is the outrage and incomprehension of the South Vietnamese who watch the North violate the ceasefire with impunity and grind ever closer to their home. There is Col. Herrington's personal account of the evacuation airplane full of babies that crashed soon after take-off. He arrived to find the plane's fuselage "twisted and burning in the mud", and in the field around it "mud-covered infants strewn everywhere --some of them ashen-faced and quiet, others screaming in pain or fright". It would take the heart of a communist to view such a scene as a propaganda opportunity, and indeed that's what it became, with Hanoi's representatives claiming that the Americans were taking Vietnamese children to concentration camps.

One gets the impression from his conversations with North Vietnamese that they believed their own propaganda: an NVA Major insists Hanoi was bombed into rubble and that the socialist masses rebuilt the city, employing, according to Herrington, sophisticated aging techniques to make the buildings appear seventy years old. Another NVA Major tries to explain away the mass graves of civilians slaughtered in the city of Hue after it was taken during the Tet Offensive by saying they were caught in a crossfire. Herrington asks him whether he finds it unusual that the civilians had their hands tied behind their backs during the "crossfire".

The final third of the book finds Herrington struggling to evacuate as many people as he can from the collapsing Saigon. As for anyone who has come to know and love a culture, it was extremely painful for him to see it sacked. He spent a lot of time reassuring panic-stricken people that they would not be left behind to be reeducated or murdered. We Americans tend to view conflicts as presenting two options: stay and fight; or turn and run. But for the Saigonese in 1975 there was nowhere to run. In Cambodia, the only nearby country, the communists were arranging an even more efficient solution to the class enemy problem. Running in all other directions brought you to the sea.

So there was extreme terror and desperation. Near the end of the evacuation Herrington receives and obeys orders to leave on the final helicopter, though 420 people who have been assured of safe passage are still waiting on the embassy stairway. For the people of Vietnam this helicopter that never comes is the final betrayal.

I was reminded of the words of a novel that had been written a half a century before the war: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

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.