Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Herf (Univ. of Maryland, College Park) has written a groundbreaking study of the creation of the state of Israel, contextualizing it within the Cold War. While President Truman recognized Israel, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA opposed the UN Partition Plan and worked to undermine Israel after recognition. They conflated the Zionist movement with communism and believed that supporting Israel would hurt American national security by antagonizing the Arabs, who could limit the oil supply. After recognition, the American security establishment enforced an arms embargo on the Jewish state, prevented immigration there, and sought to greatly reduce its size through UN Security Council resolutions. Support for the new Jewish state came from American liberal and left-leaning politicians and writers, socialists in France, and the Soviet bloc. Israel's survival was dependent on Jewish immigration through France and weapons from Czechoslovakia. Of particular interest is Herf's lengthy discussion of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini's Nazi collaboration during WW II, the failure to indict him on war crimes, his escape from France, and his influence on the Arab Higher Committee, which spoke for the Palestinian Arabs. His consideration of France's role in "Israel's Moment" is also insightful.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.

Over the years, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent has been the subject of many scholarly and popular works. The former category mainly consists of works focusing on specific aspects of his 46-year reign, while the latter tends to be general, often superficial, treatments of his life and times. What has been lacking is a scholarly biography in English. Sahin (Indiana Univ.), author of Empire and Power in the Reign of Suleyman (2013), has produced a biography that exhaustively mines Ottoman, Safavid, and European sources as well as modern scholarship on Suleyman, written in a compelling and approachable manner that will appeal to specialists and general readers alike. Following Suleyman from his childhood days alongside his ambitious father (later sultan), through his time as the heir apparent to the Ottoman throne, to his illustrious reign, the book is both a biographical study of the longest reigning Ottoman sultan and a tale of the ever-changing realities of empire building in the 16th century. This volume will serve as the standard English account of Suleyman's reign and the model for how to write a biography of a sultan.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.

Ever since Ussama Makdisi's The Culture of Sectarianism (CH, Jan'01, 38-2890) challenged a stale, century-old consensus around the topic of sectarianism in Lebanon--and, by extension, in other divided entities, such as Northern Ireland--the subject has been one of major discussion in several disciplines, including history, political science, and ethnic studies. In the volume under review, eight authors, primarily historians and anthropologists, inventively and energetically challenge persistent conceptualizations of sectarianism as rigid and impermeable, exploring its workings and the challenges to it within Lebanon and beyond its borders in migrant, transnational, and diasporic communities where forms of sectarian struggle persist. Remarkably, every single chapter makes a genuine, original contribution to some aspect of the discourse. Sbaiti (American Univ. of Beirut, Lebanon) on the archives concerning Lebanese education, Mikdashi (Rutgers Univ.) on courts and legal proceedings, Deeb (Scripps College) on marriage across sectarian borders, Nalbantian (Leiden Univ., the Netherlands) and Nucho (Pomona College) on Lebanese-Armenians making and unmaking sectarianism in both localized urban and transnational settings contribute chapters that can be usefully taught in advanced courses. The volume as a whole is crucial for Middle East collections and highly beneficial for all study of contemporary sectarianism.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

For those wondering how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeded in bringing down the country's secular establishment and replacing it with a religiously based authoritarian regime, this is a must-read book. In this detailed account, Metinsoy (Istanbul Univ., Turkey) demonstrates the importance of lay peoples' central role in shaping contemporary Turkey. He examines citizens' interactions and engagement with political elites during the time of Ataturk's state and nation building, showing how this shaped the country's future. Unlike the typical top-down, elite-driven, uncontested perceptions of studies on modern Turkey, this study places the peasants, workers, asiretler (tribes), the poor, and marginalized segments of the population at the center of socioeconomic and political challenges. In that sense, it is similar to James Scott's seminal work on peasant revolutions, Weapons of the Weak (1985). The book is divided into three parts. Parts 1 and 2 analyze the everyday politics of peasants and urban labor, respectively. Part 3 is a comprehensive analysis of the power of popular culture in society. Altogether, the study shows people's resilience in resisting and surviving elites' top-down secularization and modernization policies. This book provides an important new perspective for understanding modern Turkey.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Shapiro (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel) sets out to reorient the study of the linked histories of the Turkish Ottoman Empire and its Armenian subjects. He begins with a compressed yet thorough account of the causes and processes of the breakdown of imperial authority in its eastern provinces, starting in 1595 and extending for several decades of intermittent mayhem that are collectively known as the Celali rebellions. His thoughtful analysis offers both representative episodes and an analytical narrative of the mass westward movement of Armenian refugees, which led to the foundation of a new Armenian diasporic community in and around Istanbul. This diaspora became a major force in shaping Armenian intellectual and political history. Shapiro also provides an unprecedented account of two of its chief figures, Grigor of Daranagh and Eremia K'eomurchean. His methodological contribution is significant: he shows that the historiography of multiethnic empires such as that of the Ottomans must attend to the voices and narratives of subject peoples, in this case as recorded in Armenian and Armeno-Turkish sources. A critical new study for those immersed in Middle Eastern studies or Armenian history.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.