Reviews for Origins of the Gulf Wars

The average rating for Origins of the Gulf Wars based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-05 00:00:00 Lisa Gianakos While this book was published in 1996 and is therefore not the most up to date account of Middle Eastern politics and militancy, it is still an incredible reporting of this region of the world and provides vast insights into the trajectory that this region of the world is on. Miller's candid interviews with people across the region, combined with a vivid analysis of on the ground events, provide the reader with a comprehensive look at the different forms that militancy has taken over the past 20 years. If anything, this book is an important lesson--that not all Muslim countries are the same, not all Muslims are the same, not all Arabs are even Muslim, and not all militant Islamic movements are the same--all essential facts to remember, especially as the outsider tendency to group all of these together into one exists so rampantly.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-03-24 00:00:00 Linda Goff For 1997, before anyone gave a damn about the Middle East apart from Israel-Palestine ranters and specialists, this was a great introduction to the region for an American audience. Looking at it now among the shelf-buckling piles of books on the Muslim world, post 9/11 fluff, and academic prancing... it's still a pretty good book, as an intro. Great impressions of "Islamism" across a number of countries and general overview of the region(s) from a Cairo bureau chief. You can hate on Judith Miller all you want for things that have happened since the book was published, and you can knock the book for being a bit thin on substance -- but she was on-the-ground in the region way before it was considered "relevant", and way before 90% of the academic and journalistic world had a clue, and before middle east studies became so popular. Most importantly, she was writing this book for an American audience that didn't know the difference between Shia and Sunni, much less the different types of Shia belief systems, which the book does a good job of explaining. It was a good intro book for the time, a bit ahead of its time, and a lot better than a lot of what has been published since.