Geography, Government, And Conflict Across The Middle East, by Bridey Heing

One thing that must be understood about this book is that it is both very broad in defining the Middle East as including the countries from Iran to Morocco encompassing the regions of the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa, as well as very superficial in its discussion about this particular reason. In part, at least, given the small size of the book, the very fact that the author chooses to define the Middle East so broadly requires a very superficial approach to each of the regions and countries as a whole. This is not to say that the book is not interesting, or that it does not touch on interesting matters that are worthy of whole books themselves, but rather that the book cannot be expected to be in depth about everything, nor appears to even have that ambition. At its heart, this book appears to want to give a bit of information about a largely obscure and neglected area of the world, and those figures that the author considers to be important–the author is especially fond of talking about politically involved women in various countries, so that is a notable if understandable bias–and when viewed as an odd sort of introductory material to the Middle East can be enjoyed on those modest terms.

This book is about 100 pages or so of material and is divided into five chapters. After an introduction in which the author laments the broad brush of authoritarianism that the region of the Middle East is tarred by (excluding Israel), the author then divides the material of the book into five chapters. The first chapter purports to give a history of the geography, government, and conflict across the Middle East in some 24 pages or so. This would be an impossible task to do justice to in volumes of material, and so of necessity it is a very brief overview indeed, considering the massive amount of conflicts that have to be covered in such little space (Iran vs. Iraq, Israel vs. its neighbors, the Western Sahara, internal conflicts across the region). After that the author spends three chapters discussing modern-day geography, government, and conflict in the Gulf, Levant, and North Africa respectively. Here again we see references to the Arab Spring as well as the beginning of the Yemen Civil War, and the problem of ISIS, but again this is an extremely superficial discussion that does not even discuss the downfall of the elected government in Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The fifth and final chapter then purports to discuss important figures in geography, government, and conflict throughout the region, but this means very brief discussions of about one person per country, none of whom, for example, appear to be very prominent in fields of geography it must be admitted. After that, the book concludes with a chronology, map of the region, glossary, further information, bibliography, index, and information about the author.

The author, as might be expected, is an American beltway book reviewer and author who specializes in Iranian populism and women’s rights post-1900, which is a rather slender basis upon which to claim enough expertise to write authoritatively about the Middle East as a whole. This reader, at least, would have preferred to read a monograph about populism in Iran, her area of supposed expertise, rather than a subject which is so far beyond the author’s ability to grasp that her struggles to mention the most important aspects of each country in the space provided is simply overwhelmed. At least it can be said in the author’s favor that this book does not tax the patience of the reader. It is a short book and makes no pretensions to completeness, and it has at least that essential honesty in its favor. If you want a short and idiosyncratic book that reflects the views of a feminist beltway book reviewer about the Middle East, this is a good place to start, though I must admit that I would have written this book far differently and perhaps far less briefly were I given the chance personally. That this is at least an occasionally illuminating book despite the author’s obvious limitations is to the book’s credit, and a relatively undemanding reader can find a certain degree of enjoyment in a book that seeks to demonstrate the importance of diplomatic savvy in the well-being of people in a region where conflicts are ever-present and where the interests of common people are not always well served by those who lead them.