Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

This is a remarkable book, a tour de force, authored by an Algerian specialist for advanced students, engaged professors, and serious travelers to this important but often misunderstood North African country. Rich in detail and analysis, the book focuses clearly and distinctly on Algerian society and culture and the responses, innovations, and strategies of the diverse Algerian peoples to the often challenging environments in which they live and, likewise, to the domestic and external forces that have sought to rule over them. McDougall (Trinity College, Oxford) stresses how the Algerians have evolved and survived over the past 500 years, beginning with the limited Ottoman rule of the 16th-18th centuries, followed by the aggressive French colonial occupation of the 19th century and first half of the 20th, through the bitterness of the mid-20th-century independence struggle, the consolidation of Algerian self-rule, the tragic internal conflict of the 1990s, and the resultant deep state of entrenched vested interests and power brokers. The book is significant not only for its impressive detail and acute analysis, but also as an outstanding contribution for English readers.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Having researched most of what is available about the topic, Eppel's account of what happened to the Kurds is similar to what happened to the Lebanese, Syrians, etc., under the Ottoman Empire. However, the latter peoples were yanked from the Ottomans by the Europeans in 1918, while the Kurds were left dangling in the wind without an overarching language, leader, or ethnic or religious foundation. The Kurds have almost always been on the losing side of history, and it is to the author's credit that he does not conjecture about what might happen now that the Kurds are on the "winning" side. Eppel (emer., Middle Eastern history, Univ. of Haifa, Israel) does an excellent job explaining their sad history. This reviewer knew and went to school with several of the Kurdish Baban emirate landowners' children in Lebanon, and can verify that everything the author writes is crystal clear, devoid of the shifting sands and swamps of much writing about the region as a whole. Without bias or colored lenses, Eppel makes readers feel they are sitting there attending Kurdish conferences, debates, disagreements, and so on. On the other hand, a list of characters would have made the many "Ahmeds," "Mohammads," "Abdullahs," etc., easier for Westerners to read. An excellent book overall.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Gingeras (Naval Postgraduate School) offers an easily read, composite story of the events leading up to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Weaving through a judicious survey of the extant literature on this increasingly popular theme while offering some valuable new sources, Gingeras manages to pull out unique kernels of wisdom from this often-traumatic history. The story makes for an excellent starting point for conversation with students. The focus on events linking political and economic conditions in different provinces is especially welcome when paired with Gingeras's social accounting of how Ottomans experienced collapse. In this respect, this book offers an intimacy to the events lost in earlier studies. An added value are the detailed reflections of the wars leading up to the Turkish War of Independence. Gingeras convincingly shows how the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911, the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and then WW I all have important links that ultimately explain the commitment of many Ottomans fighting for the creation of the Turkish Republic years later. An excellent study accessible to a broad audience.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Robinson (Graduate Center, CUNY) delivers a fascinating snapshot of Islamic history through 30 brief biographies. By including a mixture of the usual suspects (Muhammad, Ali, Saladin) and the unexpected (Ibn Hazm, Ibn Muqla, Abu al-Qasim), the author offers readers a rich variety of lives in pre-Islamic history. Some biographies may seem random, but Robinson's selections crisscross the Islamic world and often interconnect, such as Timur and Ibn Khaldun, who actually met, and Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Hilli, who were contemporaries but in neighboring states. In doing so, Robinson not only portrays how the Islamic world changed and was never static but also demonstrates the diversity in lives and careers. Furthermore, his examples provide insight into the more ubiquitous aspects of Islamic history, such as the lives and educational paths of scholars, bureaucrats, religious figures, and even rulers. Though geographic differences reveal unique attributes, the similarities rightly show the commonalities of the Islamic world. This work will be a boon for the classroom.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Through excellent research in multilingual (Arabic, Persian, and Turkish) primary and secondary resources, Pinto (Islamic and Middle Eastern history, Boise State Univ.), a Columbia University-trained expert on Islamic maps and Middle Eastern history, provides a significantly original, detailed, and compelling in-depth assessment of medieval Islamic cartography from the mid-10th to the 19th century. The author focuses on a ninth-century tradition of maps known collectively as the Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or Book of Roads and Kingdoms, by the Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh, and Greek history (notably Ptolemy) from the perspectives of iconography, context, and patronage. In 13 chapters augmented by 150 superb (mostly color) illustrations, 741 scholarly notes, and 686 bibliographic references, she examines these Muslim maps as documents of political and cultural history from a broad humanities context and demonstrates the intersection with Western cartography. Tracing the inception and evolution of these maps, Pinto analyzes them to uncover the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons. Incredibly valuable for research in cartography, historiography, and Islamic studies, the volume amplifies Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward (CH, Mar'93, 30-3952). This unique compendium is a "must" acquisition for scholars and major libraries.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

This collection of 11 papers on Saudi Arabia and the five Persian Gulf states that emerged from British rule between 1961 and 1971--Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates--represents an excellent, state-of-the-art overview of their history up until independence. All essays are by leading scholars, and each offers a wealth of information on such topics as historical trade structures, mutual links, international relations, social formation, tribal identity, economic transformation, and the role of oil in the region's development. To this reviewer, two chapters stand out: one, by the editor, offers a lucid discussion of the impact of imperialism on the Gulf; the other, by Clive Holes, examines the complex issue of language and dialect, folklore, and dress of the region's peoples. Each chapter ends with a useful, up-to-date bibliographical essay of English-language scholarship. A rich volume that belongs in every research library.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

"The Ottoman Empire was an ecosystem." Thus, historian Mikhail (Yale) concludes his rich, part socioeconomic, part environmental history of early modern Ottoman Egypt. Filling a hole in the historiography with a breathtaking array of cases, themes, and illustrations, Mikhail offers an ideal pedagogical tool for all levels of university courses. He digs into his analytical tool box and reveals an Egypt deeply integrated into the larger world, both economically and ecologically. From accounts of droughts and bubonic plagues to the aftereffects of volcanic eruptions in Iceland, Mikhail's contribution opens a new prism through which to study human interactions with nature. Perhaps the most valuable contribution is the author's charting of the vibrant synthesis of life patterns between peasants, local landowners, and imperial governors and the ebbs and flows of the natural life upon which the Ottoman Empire's wealthiest province depended. Add to the mix the equally complex (sometimes deadly) relationship Egyptians necessarily had with beasts of burden, rats, and fleas, all sharing the fate of the temperamental seasonal flooding of the Nile, and this book makes for an outstanding addition to any library.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.