May 2025
CIE has compiled the following list of books and articles to guide understanding of the modern Middle East. For a supplement to this bibliography, click on CIE’s Annotated Bibliography of Basic Books on Zionism, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Books
Ajami, Fouad. The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967. Updated edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Ajami, Fouad. The Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2014.
Barr, James. A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948. First American edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.
Bickerton, Ian, and Carla Klausner. A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Prentice Hall, most recent edition.
Bonne, Alfred. State and Economics in the Middle East. Routledge Kegan Paul, 1960.
Cleveland, William L., and Martin Bunton. A History of the Modern Middle East. Seventh edition. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, 2024.
Cohen, Michael Joseph, and Martin Kolinsky. Demise of the British Empire in the Middle East: Britain’s Responses to Nationalist Movements, 1943-55. London: Frank Cass, 1998.
Cook, M.A. (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East From the Rise of Islam to the Present Day. Oxford University Press, 1970.
Dann, Uriel (ed.). The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1919-1939. Holmes and Meier, 1988.
Dawisha, A.I. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair. New edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Henry Holt and Co., 2010.
Goldschmidt, Arthur. A Concise History of the Middle East. 13th edition. Routledge, 2024.
Gibb, Hamilton. Mohammedanism. 1969.
Harkabi, Y. Arab Attitudes to Israel. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Hudson, Michael. Arab Politics. Yale University Press, 1977.
Indinopulos, Thomas A. Weathered by Miracles: A History of Palestine From Bonaparte and Muhammad Ali to Ben-Gurion and the Mufti. Ivan R. Dee, 1998.
Issawi, Charles. An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. Routledge, 2010.
Issawi, Charles. The Fertile Crescent 1800-1914: A Documentary Economic History. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Karsh, Efraim. Rethinking the Middle East. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Karsh, Efraim, and Inari Karsh. Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. Yale University Press, 2006.
Kedourie, Elie. Democracy and Arab Political Culture. Taylor & Francis, 2013.
Kedourie, Elie, and Sylvia G. Haim (eds.). Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel. London: Routledge, 1982.
Kedourie, Elie. Politics in the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Kepel, Giles. Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam. Harvard University Press, 2002.
Khoury, Philip S., and Joseph Kostiner (eds.). Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Kramer, Martin. The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2016.
Landau, Jacob. Man, State and Society in the Contemporary Middle East. Praeger, 1972.
Lewis, Bernard. The Arabs in History. Revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Lewis, Bernard. The End of Modern History in the Middle East. Chicago: Hoover Institution Press, 2011.
Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East and the West. Revised edition.
Lewis, Bernard. The Political Language of Islam. Chicago: 1988.
Lewis, Bernard. The Shaping of the Modern Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. A Century of Arab Politics: From the Arab Revolt to the Arab Spring. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.
Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of Muslim Brothers. Princeton University Press, 1969.
Owen, Roger. The Middle East in the World Economy 1800-1914. Tauris, 1993.
Owen, Roger (ed.). Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Perthes, Volker (ed.). Arab Elites Negotiating the Politics of Change. Rienner, 2004.
Polk, William, and Richard Chambers. Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East. University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Pratt, Nicola. Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World. Rienner, 2007.
Pipes, Daniel. Nothing Abides: Perspectives on the Middle East and Islam. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.
Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement 1918-1929.London: Cass, 1974.
Porath, Yehoshua. The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929-1939 From Riots to Rebellion. London: Cass, 1977.
Porath, Yehoshua. In Search of Arab Unity. Cass, 1986.
Provence, Michael. The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Pryce-Jones, David. The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002.
Rabinovich, Itamar. The View From Damascus: State, Political Community and Foreign Relations in Twentieth-Century Syria. Valentine Mitchell, 2008.
Ross, Dennis. Doomed to Succeed: The US-Israel Relationship. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Rivlin, Paul. Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab World. Lynne Rienner, 2001.
Rubin, Barry. The Iranian Revolution and the Resurgence of Islam (The Making of the Modern Middle East). 2014.
Rubin, Barry. Paved With Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran. 1980.
Salameh, Franck. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.
Satloff, Robert. From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Satloff, Robert. The Politics of Change in the Middle East. Westview Press, 1993.
Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Shapira, Anita. Israel: A History. Brandeis, 2012.
Sharabi, Hisham. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Susser, Asher (ed.). Challenges to the Cohesion of the Arab State. Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 2008.
Susser, Asher, and Duygu Atlas. The Emergence of the Modern Middle East. Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 2017.
Stein, Kenneth, and Samuel W. Lewis. Lessons From Fifty Years of Arab-Israeli Negotiating Experiences. United States Institute of Peace, 1991.
Sykes, Christopher. Crossroads to Israel. Indiana University Press, 1973.
Tauber, Eliezer. The Formation of Modern Syria and Iraq. Ilford, Essex, England: Frank Cass, 1995.
Tejel, Jordi, and Ramazan Hakkı Öztan (eds.). Regimes of Mobility: Borders and State Formation in the Middle East, 1918-1946. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
Tibi, Bassam. Islam Between Culture and Politics. Second edition. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan in association with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2005.
Vatikiotis, P.J. The History of Modern Egypt: From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Waterbury, John, and Alan Richards. A Political Economy of the Middle East. Westview Press, 1996.
Yapp, Malcolm. The Making of the Modern Near East, 1792-1923. London: Longman, 1987.
Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. Free Press, 1991.
Zamir, Meir. The Formation of Modern Lebanon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Articles
Ajami, Fouad, “The End of Pan-Arabism,” Foreign Affairs, 57, No. 2 (1978): 355-373.
Alami, Musa, “The Lesson of Palestine,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 1949): 373-405.
Baer, Gabriel, “Islam and Politics in Modern Middle Eastern History,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 29 (Fall 1983): 68-83.
Baram, Amazia, “Saddam Hussein: A Political Profile,” The Jerusalem Quarterly (Fall 1980): 115-144.
Batatu, Hanna, “Some Observations on the Social Roots of Syria’s Ruling, Military Group and the Causes for Its Dominance,” Middle East Journal (Summer 1981): 331-344.
Brown, Nathan J., “Sharia and State in the Modern Muslim Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29, No. 3 (1997): 359-376.
Campbell, John C., and Albert Hourani, “The Emergence of the Modern Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, 59, No. 5 (1981): 1191-1206.
Dawn, C. Ernest, “The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 20, No. 1 (1988): 67-91.
Dawn, C. Ernest, “The Rise of Arabism in Arabia,” Middle East Journal (1961): 145-168.
Gilbar, Gad G., “One Arab State, Many Arab States: The Impact of Population Growth and Oil Revenues,” Economic History of the Middle East (1988): 196-211.
Horowitz, Dan, “The Israeli Concept of National Security,” in Avner Yaniv (ed.), National Security and Democracy in Israel, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers (1993): 11-53.
Hourani, Albert, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (eds.), Chicago, University of Chicago Press (1968): 41-68.
Hurewitz, J.C., “The Beginnings of Military Modernization in the Middle East: A Comparative Analysis,” Middle East Journal, 22, No. 2 (1968): 144-158.
Karsh, Efraim, “Arab Imperialism: The Tragedy of the Middle East,” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, 2006.
Keddie, Nikki R., “Is There a Middle East?” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 4, No. 3 (1973): 255-271.
Khadduri, Majid, “The Role of the Military in Middle East Politics,” American Political Science Review, 47 (1953): 511-524.
Khalaf, Issa, “The Reasons for the Disintegration of Palestinian Society With an Emphasis on the Persistence of Factionalism,” in Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration 1939-1948, Albany, State University of New York Press (1991): 231-248.
Kolatt, Israel, “The Zionist Movement and the Arabs,” Studies in Zionism (April 1982): 129-157.
Kramer, Martin, “Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity,” Reconstructing Nations and States, Vol. 122, No. 3 (Summer 1993): 171-206.
Lewis, Bernard, “Rethinking the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, 71, No. 4 (1992): 99-119.
Makovsky, David, “Middle East Peace Through Partition,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 2 (March/April 2001): 28-46.
Miller, Aaron David, “The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1987: A Retrospective,” Middle East Journal (Summer 1987): 349-360.
Mishal, Shaul, “Nationalism Through Localism,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (October 1981): 477-491.
Rabinovich, Itamar, “The Suez-Sinai Campaign: The Regional Dimension,” in The Suez-Sinai Crisis, 1956: Retrospective and Reappraisal, S.I. Troen and M. Shemesh (eds.), New York, Columbia University Press: 162-171.
Safran, Nadav, “America’s Israel Connection,” The Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer 1977): 3-30.
Sahliyeh, Emile, “The Limits of State Power in the Middle East,” Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 22, Issue 4 (Fall 2000): 1-29.
Salame, Ghassan, “Inter-Arab Politics: Return of Geography,” in William Quandt (ed.), The Middle East, Ten Years After Camp David (1988): 319-353.
Sayigh, Yezid, “Arafat and Anatomy of Revolt,” Survival, Vol. 43 (Autumn 2001): 47-60.
Sela, Avraham, “The Vicissitudes of the Arab States System: From Its Emergence to the Arab Spring,” India Quarterly, 73, No. 2 (2017): 145-179.
Shapira, Anita, “Conclusion: The Birth of the State,” in Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, Oxford University Press (1992): 353-370, 414-415.
Smith, C.G., “The Emergence of the Middle East,” Journal of Contemporary History, 3, No. 3 (1968): 3-17.
Vatikiotis, P.J., “Between Arabism and Islam,” Middle Eastern Studies, 22:4 (October 1986): 576-586.
