A Brief History of the Middle East (Brief Histories) - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

Western civilization began in the Middle East: Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam, were born there. For over a millennium, the Islamic empires were ahead of the West, in learning, technology and medicine, and were militarily far more powerful. It took another three hundred centuries for the West to catch up, and overtake, the Middle East. A Brief History of the Middle East enables us to see the past in its proper perspective, giving the Middle East its full due in creating the world in which we live today.

Iraq is at the heart of Middle Eastern history, a place where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived for over a thousand years in harmony. Why does it seem different now? What is the place of Jews in the Middle East? Why does Osama bin Laden see 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as the year everything changed? These issues are explained in historical detail here, in a way that deliberately seeks to go behind the rhetoric to the roots of present conflicts.

A Brief History of the Middle East is essential reading for an intelligent reader wanting to understand what one of the world's key regions is all about.

Biografía del autor

Christopher Catherwood, as constultant to the Blair cabinet's Strategy Unit, worked in the Admiralty building where Churchill was based (1939-40) as First Lord of the Admiralty. He teaches history at the universities of Cambridge and Richmond (Virginia), where he is annual Writer in Residence. His books include Why the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God, Britain's Balkan Dilemma in World War II and Christians, Muslims and Islamic Rage.