A history of the modern Middle East. Rulers, rebels, and rogues

Betty S. Anderson. Stanford University Press, 2016. Paper ISBN: 9780804783248 Digital ISBN: 9780804798754

A History of the Modern Middle East offers a comprehensive assessment of the region, stretching from the fourteenth century and the founding of the Ottoman and Safavid empires through to the present-day protests and upheavals. The textbook focuses on Turkey, Iran, and the Arab countries of the Middle East, as well as areas often left out of Middle East history—such as the Balkans and the changing roles that Western forces have played in the region for centuries—to discuss the larger contexts and influences on the region's cultural and political development. Enriched by the perspectives of workers and professionals; urban merchants and provincial notables; slaves, students, women, and peasants, as well as political leaders, the book maps the complex social interrelationships and provides a pivotal understanding of the shifting shapes of governance and trajectories of social change in the Middle East.

Extensively illustrated with drawings, photographs, and maps, this text skillfully integrates a diverse range of actors and influences to construct a narrative of the region that is at once sophisticated and lucid. A History of the Modern Middle East highlights the complexity and variation of the region, countering easy assumptions about the Middle East, those who governed, and those they governed—the rulers, rebels, and rogues who shaped a region.

Betty S. Anderson is Associate Professor of Middle East History at Boston University.