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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People |
The bottom line, up front: Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs is a necessary resource for anyone seriously interested in the subject of negative stereotyping of Arabs in American cinema. The best supplement to this book, by the way, besides its recently released DVD companion piece, is the same author's The TV Arab. That work provides a sustained analysis and background regarding Arab stereotyping on the small screen. On the downside, however, both are a bit dated (I am using the original 2001 edition of Reel Bad Arabs) and perhaps dangerously so at times. More about that in a bit.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 12:47 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
The Accidental Empire
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The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 |
[Editor's Note: A warm welcome to our guest, Richard Silverstein] Gershom Gorenberg, one of Israel's foremost scholars of the Israeli settler movement, spoke to a Seattle gathering of the Israeli Policy Forum at a Mercer Island reception in April. Gorenberg is an editor and one of the founders of the Jerusalem Report, a centrist Anglo-Israeli magazine. He publishes widely in the U.S. media and recently had a column in the NY Times.
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Posted by Richard Silverstein at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Warlords and Merchants
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Warlords And Merchants: The Lebanese Business And Political Establishment |
Unlike the other histories of Lebanon I've read, Warlords and Merchants takes the novel view that the prime actors in the history of Lebanon have been the Lebanese themselves, and particularly the influential Lebanese families. It's not a very well-written book - Dib goes off on tangents, and is neither evocative nor especially clear in his descriptions, but it is useful for (1) paying attention to everything else going on in Lebanon while the shooting was happening and (2) keeping track of the financial and economic history of the country.
The chapter on the Intrabank fiasco shows off the book's strengths, following the financial ins and outs of the collapse of the country's then-dominant bank while also keeping in mind the fundamental political obstacle faced by its founder, the Palestinian Youssef Beidas, as an outsider to the world of the traditional Lebanese families.
Recommended as a supplement to a more traditional Lebanese history book - Harris's Faces of Lebanon is good, as is Picard's Lebanon: A Shattered Country.
Posted by tomscud at 04:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question
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Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question (Studies in Middle Eastern History) |
Fascinating book, that while agreeing the pan-Arabism was indeed an organic movement, posits that in the immediate post-WW II era it was at least half-cynically manipulated by Egypt (in alliance with Saudi Arabia and a fragile Syria) as a propaganda tool to counter what were regarded as their primary foreign policy threats - Great Britain (then still a dominant player in the region) and the alliance of Hashemite Jordan (the strongest Arab power militarily at the time) and Iraq, then in detente with Turkey. Israel/Palestine in this analysis was only a very tertiary concern and for example even the 1948 Arab-Israeli War was pushed by Egypt, less because they expected to succeed (soberly, they did not, though they would have been pleased if they had), but more to divert Jordanian attention (in particular from Syria, which they claimed and threatened).
Posted by Tamerlane at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon
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The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon |
Guess what - them X-ians & Muslims & Druze haven't been at each other's throats since "time immemorial". Sectarianism started in the mid-19th century and is a modern phenomenon.
Posted by raf* at 07:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900
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Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 |
One of the first microhistory studies in the MENA region. Shows brilliantly how smartly the "natives" adapted to their region's integration into the World Economy. E-book version available here.
Posted by raf* at 07:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Middle East On the Eve of Modernity : Aleppo in the 18th Century
The Middle East On the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the 18th Century (Study of the Middle East Institute Ser) |
Excellent study of life in a large (relative to time and place), pre-modern, fairly cosmopolitan Islamic city with a substantial non-Muslim minority.
Posted by Tamerlane at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
