Replete with information on all the Gulf states, this wide-ranging book by a scholar with immense knowledge of the area is filled with sharp and critical views not only of the Arabs but of the personalities and policies of outside governments and oil companies with interests there. Much of it is fascinating, much tedious, and where the author overstates his case, as a "partial corrective" to the orthodox version of recent events current in the West, the reader can generally supply his own counter-corrective.