The Suez crisis, the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, was an important moment in Britain's history. This collection of fourteen essays studies the roles played by the politicians' chief advisers. The essays are based on new research in Britain's archives, although key files, like MI6's and the Joint Intelligence Committee's, and those on the Government's War Book, are still closed. And Eden ordered the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, to destroy all the evidence of the collusion between Britain, France and Israel.

This is a very important book. The contributors add a great deal to our knowledge of this deplorable episode. Particularly outstanding is Lewis Johnman's essay on the role of Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, the Foreign Office's Senior Legal Advisor.

Sir Pierson Dixon, the UK Permanent Representative at the UN, warned Eden, "it is quite out of the question to extract from the Security Council a good vote on a resolution designed to justify subsequent use of force, particularly force exerted by two nations without further reference to the United Nations."

Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice agreed, "It is very difficult to get into the heads of people in this country that the Security Council is not an institution for settling disputes, or even for doing justice between nations, but an institution for preventing or stopping wars ... The argument that by going to the Security Council we have done everything possible and that the Security Council having proved itself impotent, we are now justified in going ahead on our own, may well appeal to public opinion in this country, but the argument is based on a misconception of the real functions of the Security Council."

Fitzmaurice also noted, "under the Charter any preventative war initiated by a government on its own responsibility is aggression." Lord McNair, ex-President of the International Court, concurred, telling the government, "our intervention is illegal."

In 1953, Eden had written a Cabinet memorandum that said, "In the second half of the twentieth century we cannot hope to maintain our position in the Middle East by the methods of the last century. ... Our strategic purposes in the Middle East can no longer be served by arrangements which local nationalism will regard as military occupation by foreign troops." After the attack, as the British Ambassador to Egypt accurately predicted, "The British and French could not continue their occupation indefinitely. They would have to leave again."

The government said that no attacks would be made on areas where civilian casualties were inevitable, then ordered the bombing of Cairo and Heliopolis. The British government's illegal use of force at Suez led to the 1958 Iraqi revolution against the pro-British government, destroyed any prospects of peaceful relations with the Arab world and wrecked Britain's reputation across the world.

Well worth the time. I highly recommend this book

The wholesale looting of the Baghdad Museum on Apr. 11-12, which U.S. troops did nothing to prevent, has lent a fresh plangency and interest to this remarkable new book about history, culture, museums, caretakers, theft, corruption and the dogfights between the West and Islam over antiquities vastly older than either culture.
In two days in Baghdad, thousands of priceless treasures up to 5,000 years old have disappeared into the pockets and pickup trucks of larcenous mobs. However the Bush administration's Iraqi adventure is seen a century from now, the loss to human history and culture it occasioned is probably irreparable. Artifacts older than Abraham the patriarch have been stolen, ruinously dispersed, probably destined to be melted down for modern bangles. They will exist only in photographs, if at all, for the mobs destroyed the museum's archives as well, according to the New York Times.
Donald Malcolm Reid, a professor of history at Georgia State University, has assembled a very clear, comprehensive account of another, longer, more complex process of ruin, preservation and expropriation. In this sharply written, poignantly illustrated and lucidly organized book, Reid describes how Egyptian civilization was rediscovered by Europe after Napoleon invaded the place in the early 19th century, and how its treasures were first plundered, then exported, then preserved by Europeans who generally regarded the country as their own private piggy-bank. The living Egyptians they encountered were, in their eyes, little more than ignorant Muslim fanatics.
But they weren't. As Reid makes clear, a handful of enlightened Egyptian scholars were fascinated by the Pharaohs and were proud of their land's past. One, named Rifaa al-Tahtawi, wrote a history of ancient Egypt in Arabic in 1868 after studying the land and its monuments for nearly 35 years. Even earlier Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, another scholar, had warned of the dangers of a European invasion of Egypt when Napoleon arrived with his armies in 1798. His words could come from an Iraqi citizen interviewed on CNN today:
"This is the beginning of a period marked by great battles; serious results were suddenly produced in a frightening manner; miseries multiplied without end, the course of things was troubled, the common meaning of life was corrupted and destruction overtook it and the devastation was general."
Worse was to come. Napoleon brought with him a remarkable entourage of scholars headed by the brilliant libertine, Vivant Denon, and the result was the monumental "Description de L'Egypte," one of the most beautiful multi-volume works of art and science ever published, a work so gorgeous that collectors commissioned special bookcases decorated with gilt sphinxes to hold it, and nothing but it.
But the result of the Napoleonic expedition, and its "Description," was ruinous, as Reid makes clear. A kind of Egyptian gold-rush opened up within the conquered country, and British and German scholars and diplomats descended on Egypt like locusts, determined to rescue it from itself ' and take home as many antiquities as possible in the process. The Rosetta Stone was one of the earliest spoils of war, found by the French, captured by the British in 1801 and today in the British Museum in London. (Americans arrived too late: Not until 1924 did the University of Chicago set up a permanent bureau in Cairo.)
After the first rampage of looting ' perhaps because the antiquities were so infernally heavy to transport, perhaps because the Europeans thought they'd be occupying Egypt in perpetuity ' another, subtler form of sequestration followed. The French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, decided it might be a good idea to set up a museum of antiquities in Egypt itself. It is the ancestor of the modern Cairo Museum, but Mariette was opposed to letting native Egyptians inside:
"Egypt is still too young in the new life which she has just received to have a public easily impressed in matters of archeology and art," he explained.
This is one of many ironies that enliven Reid's text, and this book can be read on several levels, as a history of archeology, of politics and warfare, of culture, of prejudices and superstitions, both Egyptian and European, Western and Islamic.
Reid tells it all very clearly, and unflinchingly. Egyptians were finally allowed into their museum in 1915 and could get in free on Tuesdays. Some rubbed up against the antiquities "as a cure for various ills," and the Baedeker guide counseled European visitors to avoid the museum on Tuesdays when "Arab visitors of the lower classes" flocked in.
Some very famous Egyptologists, among them E. A. Wallis Budge and Gaston Maspero, emerge from Reid's pages in all their roguish glory, as brilliant thieves and snobs. Maspero's 13-volume "History of Egypt" now fetches fancy prices on abebooks.com and Budge's treatises ancient Egyptian religion are available in Dover paperback reprints. Reid exposes their thefts and prejudices very artfully.
This is above all a magnanimous book, an attempt at making restitution in ink for what has been stolen in stone. It is hard not to sympathize as Reid quotes the Egyptian scholar Ali Mubarak, who issued a huge 20-volume topographical encyclopedia of Egypt in 1887, with this humble, honest preface, expressing Arab humanism at its best:
"We look upon these works but do not know the circumstances of their creation, we wander through them but do not know who made them... But it is our duty to know these things, for it is not fitting for us to remain in ignorance of our country or neglect the monuments of our ancestors. They are a moral lesson to the reflective mind, a memorial to the thoughtful soul...
"For what our ancestors have left behind stirs in us the desire to follow in their footsteps, and to produce for our times what they produced for theirs; to strive to be useful even as they strove."

This book is a must read for anyone who is the least bit interested in the history of the world. So much of today's strife can be traced back to this little conflict, but if you ask the majority of people out there, they couldn't even tell you who the participants were. This book tells everything, and leaves no stone unturned. Taking up where the author's previous book Spitfires over Israel left off, this book covers the lead up to the conflict, with viewpoints taken from all the main participants. The British, French, Israeli and Egyptian points of view are all shown, and the power struggle for control of the whole Middle East is brought out in this riveting book. If you are fascinated by any one of these countries, or the Middle East in general, you should add this title to your library immediately.

Chris Banyai-Riepl
Aviation What-Not

I found WITNESS IRAQ to be a commendable effort. It is the first photojournalist account of the war with Iraq that I have found to depict the horrific suffering of the Iraqi civilians. And some of the images are *quite* horrific. The two images that come to mind as the most difficult are: the image of an Iraqi boy, age 4-6, who lost both his arms in the bombing, as well as his entire family; the image of the charred remains of an Iraqi civilian sitting behind the wheel of his car.

The other aspect of WITNESS IRAQ that I find commendable is the image of the plundered Iraq Museum, along with the companying text that explains that, though the museum contains relics dear to all of humanity, the first site to be safeguarded by military personnel was an oil plant. Other telling pictures include an image of an American soldier draping the US flag over a statue of Saddam (an image that appears to symbolize conquest rather than liberation), and an image of a US soldier urinating on a mural of Saddam.

WITNESS IRAQ is commendable because it tears away the pretense that war, in any context, is a pleasant occurance.

Women and Power in the Middle East provides college-level audiences with seventeen essays which analyze the social, political, economic and cultural forces shaping gender systems in the Mid-East and North Africa. These appeared at different times in the journal Middle East Report, and outline changing roles women have played in the politics of the region, when and why they mobilize, and how movements and politics affect their lives. Recommended for any collection strong in women's or Middle East history.

Dear Professor Paidar your thoughtful points of view in this book is obviously salient.Really it must have taken a long time for you to study so much sources and cite them with honesty. Indeed, I took a lot of advantages from this impartially written book, and I think that no other one can accuse you of favouring any government or political feature in your book. Dear Professor, Since I am writing my own Thesis regarding political participation of women in the process of Iranian Revolution, I see myself completely needy to your invaluable comments about my own ideas in this regard.I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Before moving to Saudi Arabia, I found Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse by Saddeka Arebi. I eagerly devoured the substantial text, believing the book would give me a context where I could situate myself as I settled into my new environment. I also hoped the book would help me understand a part of the world that is surrounded in mystery and intrigue--at least, to most Westerners. I was not disappointed. Saddeka uses literature to explore Saudi Arabia's "preoccupation...with the subject of women--their education, their work, their mobility." Why the use of literature for such a daunting task? Because "literature...has historically and continues today to define reality." How do women themselves "read" their own culture? How do they perceive their own religious heritage, their cultural traditions, and history? How do they respond to conventional interpretations of their religion, tradition, and history? What do they see as they look at the world from their particular social space?

Saddeka has produced an ambitious, scholarly text. The bulk of the text focuses on the work of nine Saudi Arabian women authors. Constraints are placed on writers--whether they be male or female--"writers are always disseminators of a culture if not its creators, in the Saudi society they are expected to be gatekeepers, advocates, protectors of the canons, and interpreters all at the same time. The purpose of writing, as defined by the centers of power, is to produce a perception of reality congruent with and guided by the ideas of these power centers." Then, after all is written, edited and published, Saddeka says, "writing in Saudi Arabia is economically unrewarding."

Chapter 2 focuses on three writers. Fowziyha Abu-Khalid, known as a poet, is interested in the relationship of literature to religion. She believes "that the right of discussion and of participation in discourse should be accorded to everybody." Change, she believes, depends on the masses, not the intellectuals. Ruqayya Ash-Shabib, best known as a short story writer, bases her work on ordinary women who hold no positions of formal power, but changed history in a profound way. Two examples are Sheherazade and Balqees, the queen of Sheba. She believes "that the problem is not male dominance, but rather female submission." Rajaa 'Alim, a pioneer in playwriting, thinks the primary function of literature is "liberation of the individual." With her use of well-known symbols such as the camel, she attempts to create a new way of looking at those symbols.

Chapter 3, under the broad heading of victimization literature, gives the spotlight to three more writers of short stories. Sharifa As-Shamlan "draws most of her stories from the real lives of women with whom she comes in contact as a social worker, especially those in prison." She "writes to and for the ordinary person." Khayriyya As-Saggaf explains that she doesn't "write for someone who is in a hurry, who reads in a car, or who reads while busy doing something else." The reader travels with the writer, known for her sensitivity to cultural values, exploring new meaning for existence. Najwa Hashim began like all women writers, working for newspapers and magazines. Najwa's stories generally deal with women "who struggle with the discrepancy between the real and the ideal."

Chapter 4 gives us a look at three of "the most widely read female Saudi Arabian essayists. Juhayer Al-Musa'ed's skill revolves around her ability to ask the right questions without necessarily providing the answers. Not especially popular with women readers, Juhayer is seen as "declaring her alliance with men, hence emphasizing the premises of the dominant discourse." Fatna Shaker believes the problem of how societies arrange themselves "can only be solved if understood in broader terms and explored in terms of structural causes." Sohaila Zain Al-Abedin is correctly perceived "by other literary men and women as being in line with the dominant discourse." Two themes dominate her writing: women--veiled, immobile, segregated from men and battling the encroachment of the West.

Above all, Saudi Arabian women writers would like their work to be perceived as having to do with humanity--not just a reflection of a feminine experience. So often, their writing is demeaned further by those critcs who render their work as reflective only of the writer's own experience.

Excellent, thorough treatment of selected women authors in a country that has experienced a lot of change over a short period of time.

Women In Muslim Family Law appears in its second edition to update information on family law reforms throughout the Middle East and Asia, presenting new insights on the diverse interpretations of Muslim family law in the region and including expanded sections handling key issues in Muslim religious and social life. Invaluable and timely.

This is a amazing book! If you are interested in reproducing authentic costumes, this is the book for you. I have used this book many times to make my own costumes. There are patterns and pictures of each piece of clothing so you can easily make your own reproduction. This is the only book you need if you want to make a Turkish costume. It is also an excellent book for a college research paper. This book is too good to pass up!