Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

The Cairo Geniza, that treasure trove of documents from medieval Egypt, contains marriage contracts, matchmaker records, letters, wills, legal responsa, and many more texts documenting all aspects of life. Krakowski (near Eastern and Judaic studies, Princeton) defines her subject--women's adolescence--as the period from puberty until marriage and displays comprehensive familiarity with Geniza documents, Islamic and Jewish legal material, and modern scholarship. She contrasts Geniza society to medieval Islamic norms and those of northern and southern Europe, reconsiders conclusions reached by Shelomo Dov Goitein and others, and identifies issues remaining to be studied. Methodologically, she gleans information from statistical analysis of provenance, dating, dowries, and even pious phrases in patronyms indicating whether a bride's father was alive or dead. Her study shows that halakic expectations were respected despite social realities that diverged from Jewish law and that Geniza-period fathers had greater reticence about childhood marriage than was the case in surrounding society. Krakowski's chapter on law is part of a growing body of scholarship expanding the way scholars understand non-Muslim participation in Islamicate social and legal thought, including in legal areas one might think are unique to Jewish tradition. Krakowski's book deserves careful attention by scholars in both Jewish and women's studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; professionals.

This magisterial work distills decades of interpretative research and teaching into a grand overview of Iranian history from 1501 until the current Islamic Republic. Amanat (history, Yale) follows the Iranian state as it was forged in the crucible of competing forces consisting of tribal chiefs on horseback, sedentary kings, and a high clergy that occasionally opposed but typically partnered with worldly rule. Just as brilliant is his analysis of the radical change in Iran's political culture resulting from the early-20th-century adoption of a constitution and parliament--the fruit of an unlikely coalition of reformist intellectuals, disgruntled merchants, and a clerical class suspicious of secular-minded kingship that set the stage for a confrontation between secular modernism and a clerical claim to power. Clerical power initially went underground during the subsequent Pahlavi dictatorship, only to reemerge as resentful resistance in the 1960s and 1970s that erupted in the successful Islamic Revolution. Amanat deftly navigates various controversial episodes in Iran's history, most notably the career and fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, brought down in a 1953 British-US-sponsored coup. This book will surely remain the standard synthetic work on Iranian history for some time to come, and all future interpretations of Iran's history will have to take its measure before offering an alternative reading.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Lassner (emer., Northwestern) presents a sober reassessment of the emergence of Jerusalem in early Islam based on Jewish and Christian sources and myths. Using a plethora of Arab sources, the author shows how these traditions were Islamicized to strengthen the new religion and its new, multicultural adherents, a process continuing today politically as well as religiously, especially with regard to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Lassner also unravels the sources and clarifies who built these latter monuments, when, and why. This well-published Arabist also summarizes a generation of modern scholarship on how Jerusalem became the third holiest city in Islam, ranging from Muhammed and the Umayyads through the early Abbasids, supplemented by a critical reading of recent Israeli archaeology around the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. This distinguished historian's superb critical reading of old and new sources, with cautious interpretations of old and new theories and supported by an extensive bibliography, is a stimulating and educational read.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

A comprehensive study of Middle Eastern minorities would probably require multivolume treatment. Every country from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east to Morocco in the west has or had minorities at risk of harassment or persecution by a dominant majority, or who were targeted for exploitation by political, social, and/or religious elites. Although he briefly identifies a range of minorities and their issues in a review of the extended area, Zabad (political science, St. Bonaventure Univ.) focuses on Arab countries affected by the "Arab Spring." The selection includes Kurds, Alawites, and Druze in Syria; Copts in Egypt, as well as Christians more generally; Shi'a in Bahrain and elsewhere; and Zaydis in Yemen. The discussions are informative and erudite. The study evokes questions concerning minorities not directly impacted by the Arab Spring, but significant to understanding the vast demographic shifts that have greatly denuded the Middle East and North Africa of Jews and Christians (with a few exceptions, such as Israel, Lebanon, and small enclaves in Iran and Turkey) as well as Baha'is, Sufis, Yazidis, Circassians, Zoroastrians, Uzbeks, et al. This important contribution to contemporary Middle East scholarship should be of value to journalists or anyone trying to make sense of that chaotic area.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

Historian Pappe (Univ. of Exeter, UK) is one of the leading writers of Israel's "New Historians," a group that, by delving into Israeli archives, challenges readers to confront Israel's past and upend the dominant "David and Goliath" narrative. Here, Pappe brings that critical eye to the structures created around the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 June War. He describes the Israeli occupation as the imposition of a "mega prison" that assumes two forms: an "open air prison" that allows some semblance of "autonomous life under ... Israeli control," and a "maximum security prison" that strips away even that limited autonomy and imposes harsh penalties. The author follows the ways in which both models have been deployed, as well as the reasons behind those decisions and the reactions to them. This is not a comprehensive history of the occupation, nor does it focus on the Palestinians, other than to explain movements in reaction to the prison policies (including the rise of the PLO and the two intifadas). However, Pappe's book is critical for understanding the present situation and looking forward to possible solutions.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the peoples of the Levant suffered years of war, starvation, and European colonialism. Those who survived included talented and ambitious men and women with strong ties to an Ottoman past. Provence (Univ. of California, San Diego) has charted the very different pathways of the most prominent of these former Ottomans, focusing on those who became crucial interlocutors--as rebels or allies--to the European colonial administrations that shaped the modern Middle East. Students of all levels will benefit from this detailed study of a transitional period that reaffirms an Ottoman legacy behind the newly created Middle East, no longer just the product of European colonialism. The insightful study taps into most of the scholarship exploring this crucial period and primary archival sources found in France, Turkey, and Britain. Provence makes the case for thinking of the interaction between indigenous and foreign forces as crucial to understanding the current state of affairs in the region. In this respect, students of the Middle East will gain from consulting a book that is the best of its genre. As such, it is critical reading for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.

WW I has long been a topic of interest for Ottoman scholars, but the Ottoman home front has been largely ignored or, at best, unevenly treated. In this book Akin (Tulane Univ.) shows that the length and scale of the war meant that everyone in the Ottoman empire was affected. Focusing on four factors that influenced the empire's policies--infrastructural deficiencies, inability to import needed resources, the Balkan Wars, and dreams of demographic engineering--Akin illustrates the immense suffering experienced by the civilian population during the war years. Coming off the disastrous Balkan Wars, the already war-weary population endured mobilization on a scale never seen before in the empire. Akin's research was extensive (he even used often-ignored folklore), and it enabled him to provide vivid descriptions of those left behind struggling to meet the state's growing material demands, succumbing to starvation and banditry, and becoming increasingly alienated from the state. When tales of these travesties reached the ears of soldiers, many deserted to save their families. The book culminates in an analysis of issues pertinent to the reshaping of the future state: deportation (namely the Armenian Genocide) and migration (Muslim war refugees).Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.