The Arabs: A History - Softcover

It is a fascinating [story], and exceedingly well told. Mr Rogan manoeuvres with skilful assurance, maintaining a steady pace through time, and keeping the wider horizon in view even as he makes use of a broad range of judiciously chosen primary sources to enrich the narrative (Economist)

A rich, galloping narrative that spans the Arab world...outstanding, gripping and exuberant...full of flamboyant character sketches, witty asides and magisterial scholarship, that explains much of what we need to know about the world today (Simon Sebag Montefiore Financial Times)

engrossing and capacious... compulsively readable (Robert Irwin Guardian)

Rogan gives a lucid account of political developments throughout the Arab lands, unpicking messy tangles such as the Lebanese civil war or the fragmentation of Palestinian political movements... One of the special features of this book is that it draws on Arab writings (by memoirists, journalists and others) to give an idea of how the Arabs have experienced their own history....one senses Rogan's underlying sympathy with his subject (Noel Malcolm Sunday Telegraph)

Anyone who seeks to understand why the Islamic world bears a grudge against the West should read The Arabs. Few scholars know their subject better than Eugene Rogan, while even fewer are capable of rendering so complex a subject so engagingly readable. It is a joy to open, and a deprivation to put down. (Sir Alistair Horne, author of A Savage War of Peace)

With eloquence, verve, and understanding, Eugene Rogan rightly reminds us that the world, and the Arabs themselves, need to remember the past. If we are to build a better relationship between the Arab world and the West, if we are to avoid making the same mistakes again and again, we need to know Arab history from its many high points to its low ones. I can think of no better guide on this crucially important journey than The Arabs. (Margaret Macmillan, author of Paris 1919 and Nixon and Mao)

The masterly management of the material goes along with plain English, free of academic jargon. (Hooky Walker Asian Affairs)

"A rich, galloping narrative that spans the Arab world...outstanding, gripping and exuberant...full of flamboyant character sketches, witty asides and magisterial scholarship, that explains much of what we need to know about the world today." Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times