100 books like Tents and Pyramids

This is my favorite book for showing how culture affects perceptions of history. Ansari writes brilliantly of the time between the Prophet Muhammad and the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. My favorite quote about differences between Western and Eastern cultures, says it all: “What looks from one side like a campaign to secure greater rights for citizens…looks from the other side like powerful strangers inserting themselves into the private affairs of families and undercutting people’s ability to maintain their communal selves as families and tribal networks. In short what looks from one side like empowering each individual, looks from the other side like disempowering whole communities” (p.353). The book is full of similar cultural insights and is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the Middle East. 

In 1979 Caton traveled to a remote area of Yemen to do fieldwork on the oral poetry of local tribes. He describes how tribesmen used poetry in multiple facets of their lives, to praise friends and scorn enemies, at important events and in mediating local conflicts. Although he works to develop trust with his neighbors, he is never quite sure of the cultural rules, and soon finds himself involved in a local controversy that leads to his betrayal and ultimately abduction and imprisonment. Many of the traditions Caton describes are lost or abbreviated now, but knowing about them helps us understand the subtleties that drive Yemen’s modern conflicts. 

In 2003 Stewart was appointed deputy governor of Amara and then later Nasiriya, both provinces in the remote southern marsh areas of Iraq. His job was to offer reconstruction resources and bring a semblance of order to their civilian government after coalition forces overthrew Saddam Hussein. What he found was two very different kinds of reactions to his advice by the local population. When he returned to see the results of their community-building efforts much later, he was surprised to find that the most contentious group had made the greatest progress. His narrative reminds us that cultures have sub-groups with variations in the way they respond to various sets of conditions. Accepting assistance passively from an outsider rather than negotiating differences upfront can result in a flawed implementation.

This book describes the rich multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual communities that co-existed peacefully in Alexandria and Cairo in the 1940s and early 1950s. They forged close ties in such public domains as commerce and schooling, while keeping their family and religious lives mainly private and marrying within the community. By the mid-50s as Arab-Israeli problems spread to Egypt, the Nasser government stoked animosity against the Jews and other non-Muslim communities, forcing many to migrate. The book shows graphically how even during normal times cultural communities distinguish between areas where it is safe to mingle with outsiders and those where it is better to draw tight boundaries against penetration if they are to sustain their uniqueness. The latter are mostly areas that define them, including religion, values, and bloodlines.

The 2011-12 Arab Spring was a momentous opportunity for a young generation of activists to upend their dictators and secure radical freedoms. The scoresheet more than a decade later is mixed, as this book shows. Some countries remain mired in conflict, like Libya and Yemen; others have tentatively embraced political reform, like Morocco and Jordan; and in still others, like Algeria and Sudan, popular movements and stubborn autocrats are locked in tense confrontation. Few other volumes provide as vivid of a snapshot of regional politics as this one.

Westerners often believe that in the Middle East, ideas of democratic freedom and human rights are gifts of Western civilization. Not so, this book shows. Across the Arab world, there are generations – and in some cases, centuries – of local activism, organization, and intellectual life focused on democracy and liberalism. This is an extraordinary heritage, and one that inverts the script of Western condescension: Arab thinkers were debating democratic possibilities well before women could vote in America.

History is often in the eye of the beholder. There are many histories, not just one. This is true in general and this statement is particularly apt when we discuss the first Arab-Israeli war. When I teach about the conflict, students ask me for an objective account of the war. My answer is that none is in existence but the closest to the truth, in my opinion, is Morris’ account. It is the best book about the war, based on maticulate survey of documents. It provides a thorough explanation of the war in each and every stage.

Morris paid a price for his honesty. I was happy to pave his way into Israeli academia.

Fanar Haddad offers his readers a novel analysis of sectarianism in the Arab world – a topic that has been receiving increasing attention in academic research on the region. Haddad provides a deep theoretical analysis of the concept of sectarianism. He shows that sectarian identity, like all identities, is multi-dimensional and multi-layered, operating on various levels: religious, subnational, national, and transnational. He aptly demonstrates that sectarian identities are contextual; they are constantly negotiated through interactions within, and conversations with, a socio-political setting and the relentless flux of historical change. Haddad devotes a full chapter to the question of sectarian identity and the contestation of the state in Iraq between 2003 and 2018. Haddad’s analysis is indispensable for understanding the various dimensions of the problem of sectarianism in the Middle East.

The Arabs, as the most widespread and influential ethnic group in the Middle East, challenge historians to tell their stories in a way that is coherent, consistent, and engaging. This book accomplishes this task well, weaving together a disparate history, that reaches from the Atlantic to South Asia, across multiple kingdoms, dynasties, nations, republics, and political movements. At times rulers, and at times subjects of foreign empires, the Arabs nonetheless maintained a consistency of culture and civilization, in the midst of wildly divergent political systems and geographic locations.  Hourani manages to tell a single story, but while still doing justice to this dispersed people. 

In this historical narrative, Thompson gives a stunning take on the early rise of democratic aspirations in the Arab world. Post-war Syria in 1920 was a hotbed of liberal activism, where Arab leaders sought to establish the first Arab democracy. In response, the French and British invaded Syria and destroyed its embryonic political life. That Western powers disregarded local democratization so early set into motion a catastrophic chain of imperialism and wars, which left behind the dictatorships standing today.