Examines the region from its pre-Islamic period to the present day, its regional conflicts, and technology.

This contemporary text—the first in over a decade on the region—presents the geography of the Middle East and North Africa, defined as the Arab World, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Thematically organized, the book’s eleven chapters focus on the region’s physical and climatic setting, demographic characteristics, migration patterns, religious and linguistic diversity, political map, offshore claims, oil and gas resources, and subregions and states. Within this framework, Drysdale emphasizes pressing current problems: the impact of climate change in a region where some areas already suffer from extreme summer heat and aridity, the challenge of providing additional water in a region where per capita availability of freshwater is already the lowest in the world, the impact of high fertility and rapid population growth in a fragile environment where economies are often unable to absorb young workers entering the labor force, the looming prospect of an aging population, the effects of out- and in-migration, the diverse impact and role of Islam in daily and public life, the integrative consequences of linguistic and ethnic diversity, the evolution and imperfections of the political map, ongoing territorial and boundary disputes that often have global repercussions, external dependence on the region’s prolific oil and gas resources, and the extreme regional inequalities associated with their presence or absence. This timely and insightful analysis is essential reading for students of the region who need a better understanding of key regional characteristics, challenges, and issues.

Encompasses the interaction of political, historical, social, economic, and cultural movements as well as relevant persons (living and dead), places, and events. Spans the geographical area from Afghanistan to Morocco. Covers topics in politics, economics, religion, hsitory, literature, the arts, and more.

This major reference provides comprehensive coverage of the political parties and movements in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Frank Tachau and a group of prestigious scholars and internationally acclaimed experts on the region's political history describe the formation, evolution, and impact of parties in each of the 19 countries that are surveyed, and they also discuss Palestinian and Kurdish political groups. Bibliographies accompany each chapter. The two appendixes are chronologies of important dates in the political developments in the various countries and in the region and information about the genealogies of parties where country histories are particularly complex. A general index and internal cross-references make the data about the parties easily accessible to the political scientists, historians, and Middle Eastern students, teachers, and professionals for whom the survey is designed.

A 2000-year history of a region stretching from Libya to Central Asia ; concludes with the effects of the Gulf War.

For over a decade the Middle East has monopolized news headlines in the West. Journalists and commentators regularly speculate that the region's turmoil may stem from the psychological momentum of its cultural traditions or of a "tribal" or "fatalistic" mentality. Yet few studies of the region's cultural psychology have provided a critical synthesis of psychological research on Middle Eastern societies. Drawing on autobiographies, literary works, ethnographic accounts, and life-history interviews, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, offers the first comprehensive summary of psychological writings on the region, reviewing works by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists that have been written in English, Arabic, and French. Rejecting stereotypical descriptions of the "Arab mind" or "Muslim mentality,' Gary Gregg adopts a life-span- development framework, examining influences on development in infancy, early childhood, late childhood, and adolescence as well as on identity formation in early and mature adulthood. He views patterns of development in the context of recent work in cultural psychology, and compares Middle Eastern patterns less with Western middle class norms than with those described for the region's neighbors: Hindu India, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Mediterranean shore of Europe. The research presented in this volume overwhelmingly suggests that the region's strife stems much less from a stubborn adherence to tradition and resistance to modernity than from widespread frustration with broken promises of modernization--with the slow and halting pace of economic progress and democratization. A sophisticated account of the Middle East's cultural psychology, The Middle East provides students, researchers, policy-makers, and all those interested in the culture and psychology of the region with invaluable insight into the lives, families, and social relationships of Middle Easterners as they struggle to reconcile the lure of Westernized life-styles with traditional values.