For those of you who would like to strengthen your knowledge of the region, this list of books is a good starting point. I have only included the easy reads suitable for the non-specialist.
Modern Iran
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. Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 1989.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Ansari, Ali. Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Dabashi, Hamid. Iran: A People Interrupted. New York and London: The New Press, 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.
Ostovar, Afshon. Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016.
Modern Iraq
Cockburn, Patrick. Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq. New York: Scribner, 2008.
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.
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)
Abu el-Haj, Nadia. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Chehab, Zaki. Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement. 2007
Deeb, Lara. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
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.
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
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.
Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack. Shi’ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Islamism
Abrahamian, Ervand. Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 1989.
Dabashi, Hamid. Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest. Cambridge and London: Harvard University 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.
Nakash, Yitzhad. Reaching for Power: The Shia in the Modern Arab World. Princeton, NJ: Princetown University Press, 2006.
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.
Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998.
The US and the Middle East
Appy, Christian. Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Cole, Juan. Engaging the Muslim World. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
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.
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.
Lutz, Catherine. The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
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.
Sullivan, Michael J. American Adventurism Abroad: Invasions, Interventions, and Regime Changes Since World War II. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Vitalis, Robert. America‘s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. Brooklyn, Verso Books, 2009.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005
Yaqub, Salim. Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
