Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2016 -

This short but excellent book is part of the "New Oxford World History" series. The goal of this series is to write a new world history (as opposed to the old Western-centric one) that tells the story of cultures and countries around the world from their own perspectives. Foltz (religion, Concordia Univ., Montreal) covers the entire 5,500 years of Iranian history in 124 pages. Readers go from proto Indo-European pastoral nomads roaming the steppes of Central Asia in 3500 BCE to the Iranian presidential elections of 2013 that brought Hassan Rouhani to the presidency. Chapters include Iran's historical relationship with Greek culture, the arrival of Islam in the fifth century, the invasion of the Turks, the Pahlavi government, and the Iranian revolution. The chapter on the development of Iranian nationalism in a country of varied ethno-linguistic and religious groups is particularly good. This book is not written for those steeped in the scholarship of Iran. However, it is particularly well written and will be a quick, enjoyable read for those interested in learning about Iranian history and culture.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Historian Yaycioglu (Stanford) offers a multifaceted depiction of the Ottoman Empire in the "Age of Revolutions." Drawing on documents from an array of archives and embedded in an extensive review of scholarship on late-18th-century global history, his book demonstrates, first, that shifts in the Ottoman political imagination between 1760 and 1820 were neither straightforward nor representative of what previous generations of historians deemed "successful" or "unsuccessful" modernization. As a corollary, the author also shows that these shifts were an organic outcome of alliances, interactions, and struggles among competing groups within Ottoman society. Yacioglu's primary contribution, however, is not his criticism of linear modernization narratives (a criticism that others have already undertaken). Rather, it is the exploration of the false starts, dead ends, and contested reinterpretations of Ottoman governance that also suggest dynamism rather than failure. The book is thus an excellent addition to the growing literature on world history as a chaotic rather than cohesive function of global--rather than European--currents and influences. Carefully researched and accessibly written, the book will make a beautiful addition to collections on Ottoman, European, or world history in the early modern and modern periods.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.

Dale (Ohio State Univ.), author ofThe Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals(CH, Aug'10, 47-7039), has created a very valuable addition to the already vast body of work on the Arab Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. This work examines the education, influences, and experiences of Ibn Khaldun and the impact they had on his writings, namely, his magnum opus,Muqaddimah. Dale's interest in Greco-Islamic philosophy contributes to this biography's uniqueness. His close analysis of theMuqaddimah and the role Aristotle and Islamic Aristotelians, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), played in Ibn Khaldun's development of a historical science--that is, a new science of man--shows the intellectual heritage that Ibn Khaldun shared with later European social scientists, justifying the author's statement that Montesquieu was the first European Ibn Khaldun. Additionally, Ibn Khaldun's experiences with various political appointments are presented not just as necessary means of employment, but also as means of providing insight into the dynamics of insecure tribal states that were central to his dialectical model. This work provides indispensable background information to truly appreciate this single most influential Islamic historian.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.