For those of you who would like to strengthen your knowledge of the region, this list of books is a good starting point. Some of the books are more dense or are very narrow in their focus and were written for the specialist, and some were written for the non-specialist who simply wants a more general understanding of the country in question or the region. Thus, I have separated the lists by country, region, theme, and by their complexity. Nonetheless, I’ve read all these books and find great value in them and encourage you to give some of them your due attention.
Modern Iran (specialist)
Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran Between Two Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 1989.
Adelkhah, Fariba. Being Modern in Iran. London: Hurst & Co. in Association with the Centre d’études et de Recherches InternationalesParis, 1999.
Arjomand, Amir Said. The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Bayat, Asef. Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Behrooz, Maziar. Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999.
Kazemi, Farhad. Poverty and Revolution in Iran. New York: New York University Press, 1980.
Keddie, Nikki. Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981.
Moaddel , Mansoor. Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1994.
Parsa, Misagh. Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Vahabzadeh, Peyman. A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010.
Modern Iran (non-specialist)
Abrahamian, Ervand. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Algar, Hamid. Roots of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York: Islamic Publications International, 2001.
Ansari, Ali. Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Arjomand, Amir Said. After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Dabashi, Hamid. Iran: A People Interrupted. New York and London: The New Press, 2007.
Dabashi, Hamid. Iran, the Green Movement, and the USA: The Fox and the Paradox. 2010.
Ehteshami, Anoushiravan. Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives: The Politics of Tehran’s Silent Revolution. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Hoboken [NJ]: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003.
Kurzman, Charles. The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Ramazani, R.K. Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East. Baltimore:John Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Modern Iraq (specialist)
[Note to Reader: As a result of three destructive wars, successive tyrannies, and 12 years of sanctions, scholarship on Iraq has been difficult to pursue thereby resulting in less books.]
Jabar, Faleh. The Shi`ite Movement in Iraq. London: Saqi Books. 2005.
Nakash, Yitzhak. The Shi’is of Iraq. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Natali, Denise. The Kurdish Quasi-state: Development and Dependency in Post-gulf War Iraq. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010.
Modern Iraq (non-specialist)
Cole, Juan. The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
Cockburn, Patrick. Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Thabit, Abdullah. Dictatorship, Imperialism and Chaos: Iraq Since 1989. Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2006.
Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Marr, Phebe. The Modern History of Iraq. Boulder: Westview, 2004.
Modern Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine/Israel)(specialist)
Deeb, Lara. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Gelvin, James. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Modern Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine/Israel)(non-specialist)
Abu el-Haj, Nadia. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Ajami, Fouad. The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. [This is a silly book filled with orientalist rhetoric so forgive me for listing it. I do so only because it is one of the few books on al Sadr.]
Chehab, Zaki. Inside Hamas; The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement. 2007
Eisenberg, Laura. My Enemy’s Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, 1900-1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.
Hamzeh, Ahmad Nizar. In the Path of Hizbullah. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
Kimmerling, Baruch. The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and Military. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.
Norton, Augustus R. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Pape, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: One World, 2006.
Roy, Sara. Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. London: Pluto Press, 2007. England: Pluto Press, 2007.
Salibi, Kamal. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack. Shi’ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Islamism (specialist)
Abrahamian, Ervand. Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 1989.
Jabar, Faleh. The Shi`ite Movement in Iraq. London: Saqi Books. 2005.
Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998.
Islamism (non-specialist)
Ajami, Fouad. The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. [This is a silly book filled with orientalist rhetoric so forgive me for listing it. I do so only because it is one of the few books on al Sadr.]
Cole, Juan. Shi’ism and Social Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Dabashi, Hamid. Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Deeb, Lara. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Ferguson, James. Taliban: The Unknown Enemy. Cambridge: De Capo Press, 2011.
Gerges, Fawaz. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad went Global. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Hamzeh, Ahmad Nizar. In the Path of Hizbullah. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
Hiro, Dilip. War Without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Nakash, Yitzhad. Reaching for Power: The Shi’a in the Modern Arab World. Princeton, NJ: Princetown University Press, 2006.
Nasr, Vali. The Rise of Islamic Capitalism: Why the New Muslim Middle Class Is the Key to Defeating Extremism. New York: Free Press, 2009.
Nasr, Vali. The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. New York: Norton and Company, Inc., 2006.
Norton, Augustus R. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Imperialism and the Middle East (non-specialist)
Cole, Juan. Engaging the Muslim World. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
Khalidi, Rashid. Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009.
Khalidi, Rashid. Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.
Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Hoboken [NJ]: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003.
Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Mamdani, Mahmoud. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Three Leaves Press, 2004.
McAlister, Melani. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Vitalis, Robert. America‘s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. Brooklyn, Verso Books, 2009.
Yaqub, Salim. Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
The “Arab Spring”
Gelvin, James. The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Owen, Roger. The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Imperial US and the World (non-specialist)
Appy, Christian. Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Connelly, Matthew James. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. New York: Owl Books, 2006.
Grandin, Greg. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009.
Immerman, Richard, H. Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Lutz, Catherine. The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Sullivan, Michael J. American Adventurism Abroad: Invasions, Interventions, and Regime Changes Since World War II. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Suri, Jeremi. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Von Eschen, Penny. Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005