Keys to Understanding the Middle East
A very good introduction to language, culture, religion and the impact of imperialism on the region. Certainly not an advanced text, but challenges the common misperceptions held by the West and often conveyed in the media.
The content gives a nuanced view of cultural differences and the diversity of the region with good maps and images. Of course everything has some bias, but this text again challenges conventional Western wisdom/bias regarding development and the impact of colonialism in the Middle East.
This is not a text that gives an overview of current affairs in the region, but provides the necessary background over which to lay current events. It will not be immediately out of date, but far from it. In this regard it could supplement a current events approach in the classroom.
The writing is very accessible and would be appropriate for an Introductory level Middle East course. A very adequate glossary at the end provides review of cultural, Arabic and religious terms for immediate review.
This text does a remarkable job of explaining many terms across linguistic boundaries for consistency. This show how many very disparate cultures share multiple religious similarities.
Is is absolutely divisible. I plan to use Chapter 1 & 2 as an introduction to Middle East Politics course that I teach. I will then use Ch. 3 later to challenges the assumptions made in Bernard Lewis' book, "What Went Wrong" about why the Middle East fell behind the West or if that is even an appropriate comparison.
The introduction lays out the very clear structure for the three chapters, then follows the plan as delineated. This is something that certainly could be debated, but I might move the "Defining the term Middle East" section of Chapter 3 up to the beginning with the similar section of the introduction.
Navigating the text is very easy, but I might not skip quite so much white space between images, maps or pages. Some photos are embedded within the text and others are at the end of each section. This could be made uniform.
I found no grammatical errors. I found one typographical error at the bottom of Page 47 on the last line: "Kurds a" should be Kurds are. Secondly, one picture caption on P. 38 states "the previous Jesus mosaic image" is in fact several pages later.
The text in my opinion is far from culturally insensitive or offensive. In fact it provides instruction to aid others in cultural awareness of the region to avoid that trap.