Full Product Details
Author: Alan Mikhail (Assistant Professor of History, Assistant Professor of History, Yale University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.90cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 16.30cm
Weight: 0.723kg
ISBN: 9780199768677
ISBN 10: 0199768676
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 17 January 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
<br> One of the oldest cradles of human civilization, and now the site of fierce conflicts over land, water, and oil, the Middle East and North Africa region have much to tell us about the long-term relation between humans and nature. In these diverse, intelligent essays that relation defines the region in a compelling new light and gives it a global significance. --Donald Worster, University of Kansas and Renmin University of China <br><p><br> Prefaced by a thoughtful, carefully annotated essay, Water on Sand offers stimulating insights by a group of distinguished scholars into the neglected subject of Middle Eastern environmental history. The book contains both wide-ranging thematic essays and focused research reports on environmental subjects ranging from North Africa and Turkey to the Arab World and Central Asia. It represents, as its title suggests, a renewed and important catalyst for environmental studies in a region historically known for its two great river systems and fragile ecology and more recently for population pressures on and political conflicts over scarce resources. -Stephen F. Dale, author of The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals<br><p><br>
Much of the material the collection presents is interesting, and its range is impressive, from considerations of the environment's effect on the longevity of empires to estimates of the size of the typical daily catch enjoyed by fishermen in medieval Istanbul. Foreign Affairs Well-sourced, well-written, well-argued, and often quite interesting. The scholars, editor, and publishers are to be commended. Middle East Media and Book Reviews A readable and widely sourced text that can be used with confidence by anyone eager to teach the subject at the high school or college level. The overall standard is so high, so thought provoking and drawn so much from recent research as to resist most of the usual types of criticism directed towards edited works. Roger Owen, International Journal of Turkish Studies In many ways the book provides a refreshing look from a rather new vantage point at a topic that this reviewer had thought was fairly well known and understood. The histories of many of the areas or countries within MENA have clearly been shaped through the power and control of their environmental histories and these studies will open up many new avenues of academic research which have been neglected in the past or even hidden from view altogether. Stephen Upex, Landscape History Water on Sand, edited by Alan Mikhail, is a diverse and engaging collection of works that bring environmental history to the forefront of the study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a compelling way. The essays that compose the book cover a significant swath of time-from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries-as well as a vast geographic space, and they deliver a persuasive call to utilize environmental history as a tool to understand the history of this region better. Teaching History
Water on Sand, edited by Alan Mikhail, is a diverse and engaging collection of works that bring environmental history to the forefront of the study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a compelling way. The essays that compose the book cover a significant swath of time-from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries-as well as a vast geographic space, and they deliver a persuasive call to utilize environmental history as a tool to understand the history of this region better. * Teaching History * In many ways the book provides a refreshing look from a rather new vantage point at a topic that this reviewer had thought was fairly well known and understood. The histories of many of the areas or countries within MENA have clearly been shaped through the power and control of their environmental histories and these studies will open up many new avenues of academic research which have been neglected in the past or even hidden from view altogether. * Stephen Upex, Landscape History * A readable and widely sourced text that can be used with confidence by anyone eager to teach the subject at the high school or college level. The overall standard is so high, so thought provoking and drawn so much from recent research as to resist most of the usual types of criticism directed towards edited works. * Roger Owen, International Journal of Turkish Studies * Well-sourced, well-written, well-argued, and often quite interesting. The scholars, editor, and publishers are to be commended. * Middle East Media and Book Reviews * Much of the material the collection presents is interesting, and its range is impressive, from considerations of the environment's effect on the longevity of empires to estimates of the size of the typical daily catch enjoyed by fishermen in medieval Istanbul. * Foreign Affairs *
<br> A major contribution to world environmental history. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. --CHOICE<br><p><br> One of the oldest cradles of human civilization, and now the site of fierce conflicts over land, water, and oil, the Middle East and North Africa region have much to tell us about the long-term relation between humans and nature. In these diverse, intelligent essays that relation defines the region in a compelling new light and gives it a global significance. --Donald Worster, University of Kansas and Renmin University of China <br><p><br> Prefaced by a thoughtful, carefully annotated essay, Water on Sand offers stimulating insights by a group of distinguished scholars into the neglected subject of Middle Eastern environmental history. The book contains both wide-ranging thematic essays and focused research reports on environmental subjects ranging from North Africa and Turkey to the Arab World and Central Asia. It represents, as its title suggests, a renewed and important catalyst for environmental studies in a region historically known for its two great river systems and fragile ecology and more recently for population pressures on and political conflicts over scarce resources. -Stephen F. Dale, author of The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals<br><p><br>
Author Information
Alan Mikhail is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History, which won the Roger Owen Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association and the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize from Yale University.
