The Arabs

Eugene Rogan' major new book is at its heart about the extraordinary diversity of the Arab experience diversity of the Arab experience- a people united by language and religion, but separated by politics and sheer geographical range - from the Moroccan Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean. Drawing on the writings and eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the tumultuous yeras of Arab history, The Arabs tries to balance different voices - politicians, intellectuals, journalists, students, men and women, poets and novelists, famous, infamous and the completely unknown - to give a rich, complex sense of life over nearly five centuries, starting in 1516 with the disastrous defeat of Arab forces and their subjugation by the Ottoman Turks. With the end of first of the Ottoman Empire and then of the European colonial empires in the twentieth century, most Arabs were at last ruling themselves again, and had their lives transformed by the astonishing accident of control over the world's supply of oil. The independent Arab states have since been buffeted by the creation of Israel, the vagaries of the Cold War and their own rivalries and instabilities. Eugene Rogan's multilayered, fascinating book is the essential guide to the states that lie at the heart of understanding the modern world and its future.