A history of the Arab peoples - Albert Hourani

In a bestselling work of profound and lasting importance, the late
Albert Hourani told the definitive history of the Arab peoples from the
seventh century, when the new religion of Islam began to spread from
the Arabian peninsula westwards, to the present day. It is a masterly
distillation of a lifetime of scholarship and a unique insight into a
perpetually troubled region.

This updated edition by Malise
Ruthven adds a substantial new chapter which includes recent events such
as 9/11, the US invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath, the fall of
the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and the incipient
civil war in Syria, bringing Hourani's magisterial history up to date.

Ruthven
suggests that while Hourani can hardly have been expected to predict in
detail the massive upheavals that have shaken the Arab world recently
he would not have been entirely surprised, given the persistence of the
kin-patronage networks he describes in his book and the challenges now
posed to them by a new media-aware generation of dissatisfied youth.

In
a new biographical preface, Malise Ruthven shows how Hourani's
perspectives on Arab history were shaped by his unique background as an
English-born Arab Christian with roots in the Levant.