The Arabs: A History Paperback – April 12, 2011

Short and quick: I'm an armchair historian, with a focus on American history. I am 57 years old. The "Middle East" has been "background noise" (please, I am not minimizing anything here) my entire life--noise, because I had no understanding about why anything that was happening there was happening. I knew the Ottoman Empire had existed. I knew that Britain and France had established colonial regimes across North Africa and through the Middle East. I knew about Zionism and the establishment of Israel. I knew vaguely about Nasser, the B'ath Party, that there'd been a "United Arab Republic" that strangely joined Egypt and Syria. I knew about terrorism and the wars and the calamities. But it was all noise because it made no sense to me because I didn't know the history of the Arab peoples.Well, now I know their history, at least as well as one can learn it from a 500 page book, and it's no longer "noise." I have some basic sense for why what has happened did and why what is happening now does. This book is essential reading (I paired it with Laquer's magisterial "A History of Zionism" to get a fuller knowledge base) for anyone who wants the "noise" to make some sense. Rogan writes thoughtfully and easily. His chapter on the rise of Arab nationalism in the years after Nasser's revolution in Egypt is a tour de force. His explication of the rotten legacy of imperialism and the insanity of the Cold War as it played out in the Middle East is compelling/Some of the book is difficult reading: the Israelis have never claimed to be saints and his chapter on Palestine, the British Mandate and the Partition will not go down well with many people. But nothing in the Middle East goes down well and the book, overall, is a balanced, articulate and well-written history of the ARAB peoples, from the ARAB peoples' perspective.Read this book.

A well written book that used chronicles of Middle Eastern writers rather than western academics to bring a new perspective to Arab history. Nicely accomplished. A bit light on Saudi Arabia but other players given good, long historical explanations.

I learned from Rogan's sympathetic and well-written history political history of the Arabs, and I am glad to recommend it --- but with one small and one more serious reservation. This is a fine historical survey that emphasizes the political organization and dimension of what we now consider "Arab" nations, commencing in roughly 1500 CE up to the present. This is not a history of Arab tribes, of the foundations or development of Islam, or of Arab culture more generally, either contemporary or historical. But what it does, it does very well. Rogan manages the challenge of providing a scholarly account, including much that is original (at least to this non-specialist), while writing in a consistently interesting and readable style --- no small thing.The book's particular strength, I think, is Rogan's detailed telling of the story from an Arab perspective, drawing from a wide range of Arab sources and with what one reviewer called many "lively vignettes" well-chosen for the light they shed. Perhaps inevitably, this strength is also the source of an arguable weakness, in as much as the strong focus on the Arab perspective at times overstates that view and produces a less-than-balanced picture, especially of more recent history. Although this makes the book less satisfactory as a general history of the region, it seems to me mostly a reasonable trade-off for the benefit gained, and Rogan provides a perspective that I learned from and that many readers will appreciate.My more serious reservation, and I view it as a real defect in Rogan's historical account, is the almost comprehensive neglect of the political implications (as well as reglious and cultural) of the conflict among Sunni, Shiite and other elements of Islam. Granted that this is an avowedly "political" history, not a theological history, the near-exclusion of this dimension is baffling. It is rather as if one wrote a history of Western Europe between 1500-1800 that mostly ignored the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Catholic/Protestant conflict flowing from these differences, which while reglious in their foundation, but were profoundly political in their consequence. The exclusion of this dimension in Rogan's treatment is so complete that one presumes it is the result of a considered decision by the author. I decline to speculate on the rationale, but it is much to be regretted.Despite the serious reservation expressed above, I repeat my recommendation: This is both serious scholarly history and a compelling read. I think most readers will benefit from and enjoy Rogan's book.

The Arabs: A History - is a delightful read from cover to cover. Engaging, insightful, concise, easy to understand. One of my favorite history books. Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in Arab history. I purchased the updated edition as my hardcover version was published in 2009 and I was eagerly looking forward to having what I thought would be up to 166 additional pages of updates for the ensuing 11 years from 2009 to 2020. However, this new version is paperback and measures just under 5"x8" causing the same hardcover text to be spread over smaller pages. Hence, 497 pages of my hardcover book consumes 617 pages of the paperback version. The epilogue of the 2009 version becomes final chapter of the updated 2018 chapter entitled "The Arabs in the Twenty-First Century" and the bulk of the updated text begins on page 617 and ends on page 646 resulting in fewer than 29 pages of updated material to cover those 11 years. A disappointment for sure; however still, "The Arabs: A History" is a must read for everyone, including young people.