The Jews of Modern France Book

An important, groundbreaking work, and Thompson should be congratulated for tackling such a loaded topic and in Arabic too(!) I could have used a little more gender and a lot less politicking, but I suppose that's the nature of the beast. Her point was well taken, however, that the matter of gender relations, particularly the power hierarchy existing therein, was always the source and endpoint of both cultural and political power struggles. Her argument that the colonial experience exacerbated and even, to some degree, caused the stark gender inequalities in Syria and Lebanon is a plausible and appealing claim, but I still came away feeling a lack of much hard evidence.