The title, Blue-Eyed Arabs of the North, indicates Europeans, specifically Norwegians, who have been hugely successful in the oil business. They literally went from rags to riches. The story begins in rainy Stavanger, Norway in the summer of 1989. Katie Hammerstrøm, 43, an American divorcée, is newly married to Norwegian civil engineer Olaf Hammerstrøm, 59, a kind and good man. Unfortunately, about the only thing they have in common is their religion, which is New Age. Suffering from culture shock and dissatisfaction with her marriage, Katie wants to take a summer job teaching in England to get away for awhile. Olaf lets her go, but with trepidation. In England, Katie is immediately taken under the wing of the director of studies at the boarding school where they work. The two quickly become friends, and as time goes by, draw ever closer. The school itself is a personality, forming a strong foundation for the lives of teachers and students alike. What will Katie decide to do at the end of her summer job?

Once a voiceless region dominated by authoritarian rulers, the Arab world seems to have developed an identity of its own almost overnight. The series of uprisings that began in 2010 profoundly altered politics in the region, forcing many experts to drastically revise their understandings of the Arab people. Yet while the Arab uprisings have indeed triggered seismic changes, Arab public opinion has been a perennial but long ignored force influencing events in the Middle East. In The World Through Arab Eyes, eminent political scientist Shibley Telhami draws upon a decade's worth of original polling data, probing the depths of the Arab psyche to analyze the driving forces and emotions of the Arab uprisings and the next phase of Arab politics. With great insight into the people and countries he has surveyed, Telhami provides a longitudinal account of Arab identity, revealing how Arabs' present-day priorities and grievances have been gestating for decades. The demand for dignity foremost in the chants of millions went far beyond a straightforward struggle for food and individual rights. The Arabs' cries were not simply a response to corrupt leaders, but were in fact inseparable from the collective respect they crave from the outside world. Decades of perceived humiliations at the hands of the West have left many Arabs with a wounded sense of national pride, but also a desire for political systems with elements of Western democracies -- an apparent contradiction that is only one of many complicating our understanding of the monumental shifts in Arab politics and society. In astonishing detail and with great humanity, Telhami identifies the key prisms through which Arabs view issues central to their everyday lives, from democracy to religion to foreign relations with Iran, Israel, the United States, and other world powers. The World Through Arab Eyes reveals the hearts and minds of a people often misunderstood but ever more central to our globalized world.

For more than half a century, the field of Canadian Studies has attracted North American scholars of the highest caliber to examine Canada: its distinctive social makeup, its fascinating colonial and postcolonial history, its intriguing literature, its political structure, and its changing place in the world. Scholars, Missionaries, and Counter-Imperialists: The American Review of Canadian Studies, 1971–2021 traces the birth and growth of that field by reproducing 15 exemplary articles published in the pages of that journal from its establishment until the present day. For five decades, the American Review of Canadian Studies (ARCS) acted as a bellwether for the field, revealing its strengths, projecting new directions and inquiries, and reflecting the changing topics and methods that scholars used to study Canada. This book captures the history of that field in one robust volume. Carefully selected by the co-editors of ARCS, the chapters in this edited volume are prefaced by an introductory essay that assesses the accomplishments of the field and brief chapter introductions that place them into context.

In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.