The Arabs: A History by EUGENE ROGANReview by: L. CARL BROWNForeign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 1 (January/February 2010), pp. 152-153Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699824 .

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Recent Books

is only a footnote in history. Hence, this books subtitle seems an overly large claim.

Pomper justifies it in a dual sense: Ulyanov s

political and intellectual milieu contained

important antecedents of the movement to

follow, and his life's twisted tragic-heroic turn heavily shaped Lenins personal psy chology. In March 1887, on a date timed

to mark the successful assassination of

Tsar Alexander II six years earlier, Ulyanov and 14 others plotted the same fate for Tsar Alexander III. They never got to throw their bombs at the target, and Ulyanov

was hanged two months later. The psycho

logical reading that Pomper renders?that

Lenin, in some significant degree, made

the revolution to avenge what the tsarist

regime had done to his brother and his

family?may not be entirely convincing in the absence of direct testimony from Lenin or those who knew him. But the canvas that Pomper so richly fills with the details of Ulyanov's precocious teenage intellectual interests and his path from a

preoccupation with zoology to revolution

and, ultimately, to terrorism makes for

very engaging reading.

actors, rather than dealing with history, have used the exercise for their own more

immediate ends: to dispose of political opponents, secure economic assistance, or grease the way into the European Union.

How this has happened and what those committed to making the new norms stick

should do about it drive this book. Subotic

goes about her study in an exceedingly clearheaded fashion; not only is she in full command of the relevant theoretical

literature, but she deploys and then extends it in compact, crystal-clear paragraphs.

The writing and argumentation are a

model of what social science should be.

Middle East L. CARL BROWN

The Arabs: A History, by eugene rogan.

Basic Books, 2009,553 pp. $35.00. The title of this big book evokes memories of Philip Hitti s History of the Arabs, which first appeared 82 years ago, and Albert Houranis A History of the Arab Peoples, which was published in 1991. But whereas

Hitti and Hourani traced Arab history from earliest times, Rogan tackles a mere half

millennium. His is the story of Ottoman rule throughout Arab lands from early in the sixteenth century, its replacement by diverse European colonies starting some

three centuries later, decolonization, the

rise and fall of Arab nationalism, and the discovery of oil during this past cen

tury. The organizing theme is the constant

efforts of political elites to cope with

change, which was often imposed from outside. Readable and reliable, this sweep

ing survey balances the unity of a coherent

story with due attention to detail. As

Hijacked Justice: Dealing With the Past in the Balkans, by jelena subotic. Cornell

University Press, 2009,192 pp. $35.00. How the blood-soaked states that emerged from the horrors that befell the Balkans in the 1990s should go about reconciling victims, punishing victimizers, and coming to terms with their pasts has become a sad

challenge in the post-Cold War world.

Alas, Subotic argues, the progress made

in moving from an-eye-for-an-eye politics to due process in international and national

courts and truth commissions is deceptive. It turns out, as her Serbian, Croatian, and

Bosnian cases show, that local political

[152] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume 89 No. 1

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Recent Books

such, Rogan's contribution belongs in

the company of the earlier classics by Hitti and Hourani.

from just after World War II to the 1980s, Limbert appraises the negotiating style of Iran and of those it confronts. The 1945-47

Azerbaijan crisis pitted Iran against the Soviet Union, with the United States

playing a limited role. The 1951-53 oil nationalization crisis and the overthrow

of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad

Mosaddeq marked the moment the United States replaced the United Kingdom as the dominant Western power in Iran. The last two crises?the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis and the U.S. effort throughout the

1980s to free Americans held hostage in Lebanon?were bilateral confrontations

between Washington and Tehran. Drawing on these four cases and more, Limbert

offers advice on negotiating with Iran and addresses the need to overcome "mutual

myth-perceptions" in U.S.-Iranian rela

tions. Now serving as a senior official on

Iran in the State Department, Limbert was one of those held hostage in Tehran from 1979 to 1981. Yet as this splendid study of U.S.-Iranian relations demonstrates, he emerged from that bitter experience with an ability to bring to his appraisal a rare combination of insight, dispassion, and empathy.

Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions,

Refutations, by avi shlaim. Verso,

2009,352 pp. $34-95 This collection of 30 articles by Shlaim that have appeared over the past two

decades in journals such as the London Review of Books and the Journal of Palestine Studies ranges chronologically from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the present and topically from individuals to govern

ments and from wars to peace processes. That many of the articles are book reviews

gives the book the bonus of also offering a

historiographical survey. Shlaim, a pioneer of the revisionist school of "new historians"

that emerged in the 1980s, provides a

realpolitik reading of the history, demol

ishing the heroic and innocent image of Israel in its relations with the Palestinians. In his accounting, up to the June 1967 war, Israel acted much like other struggling new nations?no better, no worse. After

1967, Israel became a colonialist power

occupying others and steadily taking over their lands. The Israeli side of the story (viewed critically) is dominant in most

of the articles, but Shlaim, a historian of

Israeli-Jordanian relations and biographer of the late King Hussein, has a good grasp of the Palestinian and Jordanian dimensions. He also presents several

sharp observations on how the United

States fits into this history.

Jewish Terrorism in Israel, by ami

pedahzur and arie perliger.

Columbia University Press, 2009,

264 pp. $29.50. Jewish Terrorism in Israel, the second

book to appear in the Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare series, sets a high bar for subsequent works.

After a brisk treatment of terrorism in

ancient Israel (which often inspires today s terrorism), it moves to modern

times, documenting not just the well remembered examples, such as the 1948

Negotiating With Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History, by john w. limbert. U.S.

Institute of Peace, 2009, 200 pp. $40.00

(paper, $14.95). Using four crises spread over four decades,

FOREIGN AFFAIRS - January/February 2010 [ 15 3 ]

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