This book reports on a study the 2 authors did in Unayzah, a mid-size city in central Saudi Arabia. The study was particularly well planned in that the authors, an American man and a Saudi woman, were able to combine the views of both outsiders and insiders, men and women into a single seamless whole. Through interviews with local people, the authors present a history of the development of Unayzah from an agricultural and market center before oil wealth to the city it is today. They describe the early transport industry and the work women did in agriculture and the market as well as the longstanding importance of education in this city. They also describe the tremendous changes that have taken place since oil wealth, particularly with the importation of foreign labor and the construction of modern housing in new areas. Early in the book, the authors suggest that they will make a distinction between "transformation" of economy/society and "development". As the book unfolds, they do not focus on arguing for this distinction explicitly, although many facts gradually build to support their case. Descriptions of changes in family life in Unayzah present some interesting comparisons of the pros and cons of abandoning or adapting tradition in favor of "modern" customs. This book is a must for anyone who would like to learn more about modern Saudi society.

Such book is an important addition to two fields of studies. The first is the anthropology of language, namely the connection between languages and the phenomena of nationalism and national identity. The second field concerns nationalism and national identities in the Arab Middle East, especially the relationship between the Arabic language and national identity. This book embodies a rich effort to examine the works and ideas of prominent thinkers and scholars in the field of nationalism studies by examining its applicability in the case of the Arab nationalism. Moreover Sulieman uses a wide range of primary classical and modern sources, some of these sources have received only minor attention from scholars, despite their indicative content in studying Arab nationalism and the question of identity. Bu using these sources Suleiman shows how language has played an active role in shaping an Arab nationalism that had clear cultural character.
The book studies also territorial nationalism in the Arab Middle East and how this relates to the language issue as a factor in the conceptualization of national identity. In particular the ideas of Greater Syrian, Egyptian nationalism and Lebanese nationalism.

I AM TRYING TO LOCATE ARTHUR POCOCK, THIS AUTHOR. HE SERVED ABOARD THE USCGC "LAUREL" DURING WW11 W/ MY FATHER. CHARLES (GIL) GILKISON. THE LAUREL IS BEING DECOMMISSIONED IN MARCH 2000.WOULD LOVE TO CONTACT HIM BEFORE THE CEREMONY. I HAVE BEEN IN TOUCH W/ JACK SHEPARD & FRED LINKE, BOTH OLD SHIPMATES. ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO REACH THIS AUTHOR PLEASE CONTACT ME. HE ALSO AUTHORED "RED FLANNELS & GREEN ICE" ABOUT THE GREENLAND PATROL ABOARD THE "LAUREL." ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED. EMAIL- CPBUTTERFLY@WEBTV.NET (CARLETTA GILKISON PASSO) THANK YOU.

I recommend this book very highly. Khashan is a professor at the American University of Beirut and is the perfect man to to tell us about the predicament of the Arabs. He is neither an apologist for the Arabs nor a Thomas L. Friedman type of enemy. He sees things as they are: he demonstrates that Western imperialism and Zionist colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries have soured the Arabs on democracy and Westernization by polluting their experience of democracy and the West with totalitarian colonial regimes (in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Palestine . . .) and the ongoing injustice towards the Palestinians. He reminds us that the Arabs expected to share in the self-determination of nations that was in the air around WW I, and that the colonial regimes the West created in their stead was felt by them as a great betrayal. The European support for the creation of Israel was also a betrayal they have not been permitted to forget as Israel continues to expand day by day with US complicity. And yet, he also demonstrates that the Arab countries have never really changed from the basically tribal and particularistic places they were before the modern period -- if anyone needs to be reminded that the states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were created by the West for their own purposes, and that there is little indentification with these states among those who live under them. Look at Lebanon! Khashan shows how the failure of Arab nationalism and the betrayals by the West have contributed to the rise of the Islamists, who represent something of a retreat to the pre-colonial era, but also that there is no future in the Islamist states, as witness Iran and Afghanistan. He calls for a new rationalism that is also culturally compatible with Islamic values, but asks that people forget the old dreams of an Islamic state a la the Taliban. Khashan looks at the wreck of the Arab world and the triumph of the US and Israel at dictating regional developments, and asks the Arabs to wake up and stop rejecting the only path that can bring them out of their sloth: to introduce rational politics in place of dictatorships, representational government, a workable and modern Arab and Islamic culture, and economies that function (i.e., not the old socialist states that barely function). Since none of these are now present, he is pointing the way towards something that he hopes can emerge. But surely he is correct, and all of the supporters of Hamas or the Saudis or Bin Ladin are barking up the wrong tree. There may be a certain comfort for traditional people in falling back on old certainties, but there is no future in Islamis. It is more of a sign of weakness and wounded pride than anything else, and Khashan tells us so in no uncertain terms. US patriots and Zionists will not want to hear anything from Khashan except his discriptions of Arab weakness and the regional sources of it. Many angry Arabs may be furious at Khashan for suggesting that there are any causes of Arab weakness besides Israel and the US. What makes Khashan so valuable is that he spares no one, and acts as what a scholar should be: a critic. For that reason, I recommedn him very highly.

Jack Finegan's book "Archaeological History of the Ancient Middle East" is a wonderful classic. His book is separated into two parts. The first being an examination of Mesopotamia from the beginning of the Mesolithic to the end of the Persian empire. He covers in detail significant historical events within that time period of Mesopotamia. The Second part of his book deals with Egypt from the Mesolithic era to the fall of the Late Dynastic period at the coming of Alexander the Great. The book is beautifully pieced together with hundreds of photographs, tables, and maps from all the periods discussed. I highly recommend Finegan's book for anyone interested in Mesopotamian and Eygptian history. A must for any collection

My mom is the author of this book. Its a great read and not too technical - very interesting. If you are interested in archaeology, go ahead and try it, you won't be dissapointed. Don't be daunted by its "complicated" lingo... you'll fall in step with it right away.

This is a well designed and well produced textbook, which seems to have been organised with students and teachers in mind. Potts has given us a cohesive and logically developed narrative; a big advance on the two chapters by the late René Labat in the 3rd edition of the Cambridge Ancient History. Pott's aim has been "to provide a cogent, readable synthesis of Elam" (p. xxi). And he has achieved this admirably. Features of the text of the book are the summaries at the beginning of each chapter ('text boxes'), the clear site maps for each chapter, and the chronological outlines. All very useful.

The book is cultural and historical as well as archaeological in character and in its emphasis. The contents deal with pottery, seals, sculpture, glyptic art, rock reliefs, the texts of clay documents, inscriptions, architecture, site plans, ivories, coins, figurines, burials and grave goods. Comprehensiveness and scope are notable marks of this book, in the search for the origins and the influence of Elam. It covers its pre-history (c. late fifth millennium B.C.) and continues all the way to the eighth century A.D.

In this volume, Elam and the Elamites are dealt with as a polity in their own right, and not merely seen as a troublesome heterogeneous nation in relation to its neighbours, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. Potts stresses the chameleon-like character ("transformations") of Elam over the centuries, as viewed through the lens of contrasting if not conflicting sources of evidence. He argues that courte durée, rather than longue durée, is the historical concept which best helps to account for the periodic changes which characterised the history Elam.

Despite the incompleteness of the data, Potts has succeeded in bringing Elam and its people into sharper focus than has hitherto been the case. It is a worthy successor to Carter and Stolper's Elam: Surveys of Political History and Archaeology (1984), which was probably the best synthesis of that land and its culture before the advent of the present volume. Professor Potts is to be congratulated on his achievement. Particularly on his desire to communicate the results of his research to his readers in a format and language which strive to make the significance of these results clear and intelligible. This new work should become a standard text in the hands of teaching staff and students alike in tertiary institutions for some time to come.

The illustrations and plates are clear, relevant and help to elucidate the text and its interpretation. A copious 35 page bibliography and a generally adequate index round off the volume.

"Archaic Bookkeeping" is an edited translation of the catalog that accompanied the sale of 82 proto-cuneiform tablets from the Swiss Erlenmeyer collection by Christie's in 1988 in London. These tablets had been purchased in late 1950s, but had not been subjected to any detailed study. Personally I am not opposed to individual ownership of antiquities, but I do believe that preventing these valuable texts from being studied by scholars for decades is inexcusable. The tablets analyzed are mainly from Uruk, and date to the Archaic period in Sumerian history, circa 3000 BC.

The casual observer might think that the study of ancient cultures might be a field without much in the way of rapid change, but this would be false. The advent of powerful computer programs have recently allowed the processing of large amounts non-numerical data and graphic information. A researcher is therefore able to instantly access an entire body of text when testing an hypothesis. The authors of "Archaic Bookkeeping" made use of this powerful technique, which is becoming more useful all the time. This is made clear by the fact that as of 1993 (the date "Archaic Bookkeeping" was published), only 600 of the 5000 archaic tablets from Uruk had been sufficiently published.

I am an interested student of Sumerology, and my purchase of this book was an attempt not so much to understand archaic bookkeeping but to see examples of the actual translation process, and, to the degree that I could, follow along. There is currently very little of this sort of material available for the interested amateur. In general it seems that this information is both too difficult to have much amateur appeal, and too rudimentary for specialists in the field. For those looking for a good introduction to Sumeria, I highly recommend "The Sumerians" by Samuel Kramer.

I found the prose in this book to be very clear and well-constructed, with no trace of the fact that it had been translated from German. I found it surprisingly free of philological and linguist jargon; its main purpose was the practical communication of how the authors used the tablets to extract information about Sumerian field administration, labor organization, and animal husbandry. The book's area of focus is quite narrow, but it needs to be to cover the subject fairly. I found the tablet photographs and diagrams to be a highlight of the book and uniformly excellent. The bibliography was arranged by chapter and was very useful.

I've heard that this is a beautiful coffee table book with extremely well written text.

Dr. Walvoord, past President of Dallas Theological Seminary has many tremendous books. He wrote this in the 70's and updated it
in the 90's with no changes and adding current events. Some chapter titles. The Israeli-Arab Conflict, The Oil Blackmail, Watch Jerusalem, Changing Europe, The Day of World Catastrophe.
In the light of September 11, and the world events daily of the esculating violence in the Middle East, this book is a must read
for today about the end of Western civilization.