L. Carl Brown

Dawisha's political history covers the nine decades with equal attention and offers a severe but fair appraisal of all of Iraq's rulers and regimes.

These three readings offer an in-depth study of the 22 countries and 350 million people that make up the Arab world. All implicitly pose the interlinked questions of why the Arab world has not achieved as much progress as comparable areas of the world and what needs to be done if it is to "wake from its sleep."

An excellent way to take the measure of revolutionary Iran today is to read this up-to-date, well-researched, and perceptive history of its foreign policy since 1979.

Woven into this gem of leave-no-stone-unturned reporting is an account of the Israeli policies of harsh reprisals and targeted assassinations; the poor performance of the Palestine Liberation Organization; the United States' on-again, off-again efforts to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian peace; and the Jordanian government's complex relations with Hamas, other Palestinian groups, Israel, and the United States.

The book offers a critique of U.S. policy and a concluding chapter suggests moderate and manageable policies the United States should enact to transcend its "Islam anxiety."

Instead of telling the story of the Cold War in terms of an ultimately successful U.S. strategy of containing the Soviet Union, Khalidi depicts two superpowers jockeying for position in the Middle East, producing proxy wars and undermining the prospects for democracy.

The major themes in these two books are, first, the Saudi ties with the ulama (Islamic clergy, and in this case both the "establishment" Wahhabi clerics and those Salafis beyond Saudi reach) and, second, the transnational Saudi efforts in education and the media (quantitatively impressive but of more questionable influence).

The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations have teamed up to propose a Middle East policy for the new administration, including suggested U.S. approaches to Iraq, Iran, nuclear proliferation, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle East economic and political development, and counterterrorism.

Kepel frames this account in terms of two concurrent, contending "grand narratives" -- the Bush administration's "global war on terror" and al Qaeda's global jihad. Both professed a utopian aspiration.

Davidson offers a detailed historical and topical study of the Dubai phenomenon, including due attention given to "the vulnerability of success."