The Middle East has changed clearly substantially and dramatically during thelast decade. Yet scholarly and public understanding lags far behind theseevents. Th... » 

The Middle East has changed clearly substantially and dramatically during thelast decade. Yet scholarly and public understanding lags far behind theseevents. This book explains why the previous era came to end giving anhistorical and political summation of the region. Three interlinked themes arecrucial to the book. First a reinterpretation of the era of upheaval theMiddle East has just passed through. During that period many Arabs believedthat some leader country or radical movement would unite the region solvingall its problems. Second an evaluation of how the historical experience of theperiod between the 1940s and the 1990s undermined the old system making changenecessary. Third an analysis of the region today that helps explain futuredevelopments in what the author terms the Era of Reluctant Pragmatism as theMiddle Eastern societies decide their relationships to the West. «