The Shaping of the Modern Middle East

by Bernard Lewis

With this major revision of his classic The Middle East and the West (1964), a leading Middle East historian of our time offers a definitive and now more-timely-than-ever history of Western-Middle Eastern relations from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Fully revised to cover the volatile developments of the last three decades, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East sheds light on the climax and sudden end of the cold war, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Arab-Israeli wars, the formation and activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iranian revolution. Illuminating the region's geography, culture, history, language, and religion, Lewis explores the complex and often confusing issues of Arab nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and responses and reactions in the Middle East to centuries of Western influence, revealing the subtlety and sophistication of this dynamic civilization as no other scholar can.

Genres: History, Middle East, Nonfiction, Politics, Religion

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Bernard Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of many critially acclaimed and bestselling books, including two number one New York Times bestsellers: What Went Wrong? and Crisis of Islam. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Internationally recognized as the greatest historian of the Middle East, he received fifteen honorary doctorates and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The shaping of the Modern Middle East left me disappointed. First of all, Lewis defines the Middle East in terms of geography & history, of religion, language & culture, then in terms of present-day political entities then the emergence of islamic civilization & the relationship between the chinese & islamic civilizations, then he discusses exporting liberal democacy to the Middle East & its failure.
From my own point of view, he didn't come out with new conclusion, just quite knowledgeable history and information.

[Giulia Quaglia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un saggio che affronta la genesi del complicato groviglio mediorientale dal punto di vista linguistico, religioso, geografico e politico. Si analizzano le cause ma si fatica, nonostante l’autorevolezza dell’autore, a giungere a nuove conclusioni. Da aggiungere alla vostra libreria se come me la questione del Medio Oriente vi tormenta.

[Hisham Al-Hadhrami · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the best books are the ones that helps you connect the chaotic dots in your society and culture. This book enabled me to connect the dots of how volatile are the politics we follow in the Middle East by walking you through history, with this I was able to put my finger on the huge influence it had on my personal life and thinking as a person from the Middle East.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lewis controversial at times
and Daniel Pipes controversial too, in neoconservative circles

I think Pipes has a lovely summary, and he's always had highly interesting reviews, so visit his site. I don't always agree with every book he's reviewed on Lewis for example, but I still admire 45 years of book reviews on the Middle East.

........

Daniel Pipes
Middle East Quarterly
December 1994

Thirty years after the publication of The Middle East and the West, Lewis has reissued that excellent study in a slightly updated and enlarged form. The changes are pervasive but not deep; while figures like the Ayatollah Khomeini do appear in its pages, such issues of the 1960s as Arab socialism and Soviet-Egyptian relations remain at the heart of the study.

This said, the 1964 version concludes with the observation that "Friendship will be possible only when Arab nationalism is prepared to come to terms with the West."

That having more or less taken place, the 1994 version ends by noting that "for the first time in centuries, the course of events in the Middle East is being shaped not by outside but by regional powers.... The choice, at last, is their own."

To sum up, while the new first page is identical in substance with the old one, the last pages in the two versions differ completely one from the other.

Shaping of the Modern Middle East has many enduring virtues of which two stand out. It presents with succinct clarity nearly all the great intellectual themes that influenced Middle Eastern life over the past two centuries. And it presents a vision of the Middle East as a whole, with Iran and Turkey no less important than the Arabic-speaking countries, a perspective which causes the Arab-Israeli conflict to shrink to its true proportions. In short, Shaping of the Modern Middle East remains perhaps the best single volume for learning about the vast subject matter it covers.

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[Elvin Əsgərov · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not for me. It's hard to understand, maybe the translation is not good but I feel that the audience of this book is not casual readers, more like historians. It's not fast reading book as every page contains lots of information and ideas to grasp.

[Kazım ANGAY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biraz fazla Neo John ve Amerikan aklama onun dışında akar

[Jim Swike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good textbook that paints the picture of how the Middle East was formed. Enjoy!