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The Arabs: A History Hardcover – 5 Nov 2009

4.3 out of 5 stars 23 customer reviews

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Allen Lane (5 Nov. 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0713999039
  • ISBN-13: 978-0713999037
  • Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 4 x 24 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 813,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Anyone who seeks to understand why the Islamic world bears a grudge against the West should read The Arabs. Few scholars know their subject better than Eugene Rogan, while even fewer are capable of rendering so complex a subject so engagingly readable. It is a joy to open, and a deprivation to put down. (Sir Alistair Horne, author of A Savage War of Peace )

With eloquence, verve, and understanding, Eugene Rogan rightly reminds us that the world, and the Arabs themselves, need to remember the past. If we are to build a better relationship between the Arab world and the West, if we are to avoid making the same mistakes again and again, we need to know Arab history from its many high points to its low ones. I can think of no better guide on this crucially important journey than The Arabs. (Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919 and Nixon and Mao )

It is a fascinating [story], and exceedingly well told. Mr Rogan manoeuvres with skilful assurance, maintaining a steady pace through time, and keeping the wider horizon in view even as he makes use of a broad range of judiciously chosen primary sources to enrich the narrative. (The Economist )

A rich, galloping narrative that spans the Arab world...outstanding, gripping and exuberant...full of flamboyant character sketches, witty asides and magisterial scholarship, that explains much of what we need to know about the world today (Simon Sebag Montefiore Financial Times )

Rogan gives a lucid account of political developments throughout the Arab lands, unpicking messy tangles such as the Lebanese civil war or the fragmentation of Palestinian political movements... One of the special features of this book is that it draws on Arab writings (by memoirists, journalists and others) to give an idea of how the Arabs have experienced their own history....one senses Rogan's underlying sympathy with his subject (Noel Malcolm Sunday Telegraph )

engrossing and capacious... compulsively readable (Robert Irwin The Guardian )

The masterly management of the material goes along with plain English, free of academic jargon. (Hooky Walker Asian Affairs )

From the Publisher

"A rich, galloping narrative that spans the Arab world...outstanding, gripping and exuberant...full of flamboyant character sketches, witty asides and magisterial scholarship, that explains much of what we need to know about the world today." Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By Neutral VINE VOICE on 15 Jan. 2010
Format: Hardcover
In one of the many programmes about the decision to go to war with Iraq there was an interview with a middle east policy expert who was called upon to advise Tony Blair. He explained Iraq's history, emphasising the historical differences between Sunni, Shiite and Kurds and was taken aback when Blair replied, "But he's evil isn't he?" The comment reminded me of the 1956 Suez Affair when Anthony Eden misread President Nasser's intentions by portraying him as a postwar Hitler. Both errors of judgement support Eugene Rogan's observation that, "Western policymakers and intellectuals need to pay far more attention to history if they hope to remedy the ills that afflict the Arab World today."

Samir Kassir, a Lebanese author and journalist, suggested Arabs view the history of the first five centuries after the emergence of Islam with pride. Islamists, in particular, use the international dominance by Arabs at that time as proof that "Arabs were greatest when they adhered most closely to their Muslim faith". While this view may represent an idealised picture of the past it is apparent that Arabs have long since discounted Western claims of liberating them from oppression. Rogan traces centuries of resentment against foreign domination in a broad sweep of Arab nations, which by it very nature, has to be selective. However, by concentrating on political and military history, he identifies the main sources of Arab discontent in the region.

Rogan starts with the Ottoman conquest in 1516 and provides a fascinating history of personalities, conflicts and internal divisions which characterised the Arabs under Ottoman rule. It's a history with which many Britons are unfamiliar.
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Format: Hardcover
Eugene Rogan's magisterial, though idiosyncratically selective, "The Arabs: A History" is a dense but worthwhile and illuminating read.

Rogan, who spent his childhood in Beirut and Cairo, teaches at Oxford and is Director of the University's Middle East Centre. He is a former student of Albert Hourani, whose seminal "History of the Arab Peoples," published in 1993, this book successfully complements.

"The Arabs" is densely packed with facts and dates. It is a plum pudding of a book rather than a crème brulee; it took me about fifty percent longer to read than most books of comparable length. It is not, however, in any way tedious. The narrative has strong forward momentum and is organized (unlike Churchill's celebrated Savoy pudding) around clear themes. While Rogan writes with a deadpan seriousness, he also enlivens his history with anecdotes (such as the story of the exasperated Algerian Pasha who could not resist striking the French Consul with his fly switch during a heated debate in 1827) and with quotations from contemporary diaries and memoirs. We thus hear directly from the likes of Budhari al Hallaq, an eighteenth century Damascus barber, Rifa'a al-Taktawi, an Egyptian imam who visited Paris in the early nineteenth century and was appalled to observe that "men are slaves to women here...whether they are pretty or not," and Leila Khaled, a female Palestinian terrorist of the late 1960s.

Rogan begins his history in 1516 (the first example of his selectiveness), with the Ottoman conquest. He then divides Arab history into several phases: the Ottoman reign, the period of Western Colonial intervention, Arab Nationalism, the Cold War, the Rise of Oil, the emergence of Islamism, and the War on Terror.
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Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan

I bought this book after attending a talk by the author at the 2010 Oxford Literary Festival. It is a history of what started off as the Ottoman Empire from 1500, told as much as possible from the Arabs' point of view - given that it is written by an occidental intellectual.
Many of the books I have bought after attending a talk by the author lie gathering dust, or are moved from one place to another in the hope that they will create time for me to read them: not this one. I went to bed an hour earlier than I needed every night for a month in order to finish it - then leant it to a friend, who has also completed it (but found the last few chapters muddling).
It reads like a thriller, with startling relevance for today, and an outcome still in doubt. As for "Who dunnit?", it is hard not to fault the imperial forays of the British and French, as for instance in the misunderstood diplomacy preceding the Crimean War; the lack of global vision in the Suez crisis; and the repeated invasions of countries such as Algeria and Iraq, promising a freedom that all too often came to look exactly liked servitude; which last explains how the Iraqi people could never have welcomed the `liberating' armies of Christendom in the twenty-first century.
The prose style reads well. The content is generally easy to follow, which it could very well not be, as the facts are complex and potentially bewildering. My main confusion was with the Arab names: not being an Arabic speaker, I found they all look very similar on the page. The second edition would benefit from a glossary of names with a guide to pronunciation or, better still, a dramatis personae, with brief vignettes to characterise each of the many colourful individuals who shaped the multifarious history of the Arabic peoples.
Dr Quentin Spender, Oxford, June 14th 2010.
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