Books

After the American Century: The Ends of U. S. Culture in the Middle East
By Brian T. Edwards
Columbia University Press, 2015

It’s been said that a single aspiration connects all Middle Eastern people; to eat at McDonalds and shop at Wal-Mart, just like everyone else. Exaggeration? Maybe. But the comparison captures an obvious truth: that American attitudes and ideals have been disproportionately popular in the region for decades. “After the American Century” by author Brian T. Edwards, on the other hand, offers the counterargument that technology has and will continue to change this paradigm.

Shahaama: Five Egyptian Men Tell Their Stories
By Nayra Atiya
Syracuse University Press, New York, 2016

Nayra Atiya has compiled a fascinating selection of the life stories of five Egyptian men belonging to a variety of sub-cultural, socio-economic and religious backgrounds. She conducted the interviews during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1980s with men who appear to have been born between the 1940s and the 1950s. Each life history provides details about the men’s childhoods, educations and adult lives during the period from the early decades of the Republic through the early Mubarak period, with these oral histories reflecting a great deal about the many socio-economic and political changes that accompanied those decades.