Overview

Few regions of the world have been featured so prominently in the news in recent years as the Middle East and North Africa, invariably in a negative context. With two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves and a strategic location at the junction of three continents, it has seen almost constant military intervention and political interference from outside, most recently in the form of US involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has fueled powerful local responses, both culturally and politically. Today, bloody internal wars rage in several countries. The region is also the birthplace and focal point of Islam, the world’s second largest universal faith, ensuring that its global importance will endure. But Judaism and Christianity also have strong historical and spiritual connections with this region, connecting it to the larger world in numerous ways. Because the contemporary political map of the Middle East was largely an arbitrary product of European colonial rule, it remains deeply flawed, contributing to territorial and boundary conflicts that have contributed to extreme militarization. The combination of religious and linguistic diversity aggravates the region’s political problems, destabilizing states. In a world facing rapid climate change, the Middle East and North Africa face particularly grave challenges, with water scarcity already a serious problem and likely to get worse at a time when population is growing rapidly. Yet most American students are still largely uninformed about this vitally important region, viewing it through a lens that is distorted by ignorance, fear, demagoguery, and cultural prejudice. This book aims to sharpen and clean that lens, providing students with an understanding of key regional characteristics, challenges, and issues.

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9781538182529

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Reviews

In this engaging and richly illustrated textbook Alasdair Drysdale offers an informed and nuanced presentation of the Middle East and North Africa, striking a compelling balance between commonalities and differences. The author also provides pedagogical introductions to key concepts in the thematical chapters (region, physical environment, water, population, migration, religion, language, political map, economy, petroleum) while the concluding chapter offers insightful summarizing state portraits. This much needed introduction, written in the first place for American students, is therefore both accessible and thorough. Beyond US universities and beyond area studies and the discipline of geography, this book is an essential resource for all those who wish to study this region and its diversity. --Virginie Mamadouh, University of Amsterdam, and Editor of The Arab World Geographer This is an important book, covering the geography of a region which has undergone significant social, economic, and political changes during the past three decades, since the last texts were published. Focusing on the internal domestic changes and the ways in which this has impacted the wider geopolitical impact of the region in global politics is long overdue. Drysdale's long term interest in this region makes him a most appropriate analyst of these changes and he has produced a book which will be of great interest to scholar and student alike. --David Newman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University This superb book is the definitive geographical study of the MENA region. In accessible and engaging prose, Drysdale sweeps away the ignorance, fear, and prejudice associated with this wondrous and complex realm, offering instead a clear-sighted panorama of its land and life. --Joseph Hobbs, University of Missouri

Author Information

Alasdair Drysdale is the co-author of The Middle East and North Africa: A Political Geography and Syria and the Middle East Peace Process and the author of numerous book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries on the region. The winner of the Lindberg Prize for Outstanding Teaching at the University of New Hampshire, he has taught a course on the Middle East and North Africa for over forty years. He has been invited to offer testimony at hearings on the Middle East before a US Congressional subcommittee on Foreign Affairs and served on the editorial board of Arab World Geographer.

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