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The What Every American Should Know series returns with a timely guide to the region Americans need to understand the most (and know the least) The latest edition of Melissa Rossi's popular What Every American Should Know series gives a crash course on one of the most complex and important regions of the world. In this comprehensive and engaging reference book, Rossi offers a clear analysis of the issues playing out in the Middle East, delving into each country's history, politics, economy, and religions. Having traveled through the area over the past year, she exposes firsthand the U.S.'s geopolitical moves and how our presence has affected the region's economic and political development. Topics include: · Why Iran is viewed as a threat by most Middle East countries · What resource is more important than petroleum in regional power plays · What's really behind the fighting between Sunni and Shia · How Saudi Arabia inadvertently feeds the violence in Iraq and beyond · How monarchies like those in Jordan and Qatar are more open and progressive than the so-called republics With answers that will surprise many Americans, and covering a vast history and cultural complexity that will fascinate any student of the world, What Every American Should Know About the Middle East is a must-read introduction to the most critical region of the twenty-first century.… (more)
User reviews
The book starts with four general chapters: Misunderstanding the Middle East, Jogging Through the Millennia, Pulling the Pieces Together, and European Design: Hacking Up the Middle East. These give good background for the rest of the book, which contains chapters by individual countries.
There are multiple reasons that the book didn't initially appeal to me. First: Ms. Rossi quite openly showed her biases and political leanings. Whether or not I agreed with them was not the point; I wanted facts and not editorializing. Second: almost every page has a least one and often more inset boxes, and it was hard to read the text without a loss of continuity. Third: Perhaps the style of writing was an attempt to make the text more entertaining or lively, but it often came across as only flippant, snarky, or sarcastic.
I never gave up completely on the book, and I'm glad I did not because it does contain a huge amount of information. It helped me tie together some of the events that have happened in the different countries but that are so intermingled. It certainly helped with my understanding of why some of them happened. There are maps of the Middle East as well as of the individual countries. While helpful, I wish they had been more detailed because even in the case of the individual countries, the text mentioned places that were not on the maps. There are also numerous black and white photographs as well as three cheat sheets that do help. Some of the inset boxes include “Fast Facts,” “What Matters,” “Hot Shots,” and “Hot Spots.” Those were very helpful and more logically placed than some of the other insets. While notes and references are included, it seemed to me that quite a few of the statements needed sources which were not given.
It also seemed that the snarkiness was toned down as the book went on, or perhaps I just got used to it. I also got used to the constant breaks in the main text, and grudgingly concede that they might have actually made the book easier to read in the long run, simply because all the main text without breaks might have seemed a little daunting for the casual reader like I am.
I now know a good deal more about the Middle East than I did before I read the book and am glad I kept with it (despite frequent and long vacations) and finished it.