Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820–2003

A history of foreign policy gone wrong, Makdisi’s study argues convincingly that Americans have rarely engaged with the Arab nations as autonomous peoples with cultures and histories of their own—they’ve preferred "glib generalizations"—and that such myopia is at the core of much of the Middle East’s animosity toward the U.S. In his history of the Middle East, Makdisi (Artillery of Heaven) privileges Arab voices and, for the most part demonstrates an impressive ability to render societies and individuals as multifaceted. He efficiently debunks the Huntingtonian belief in an inevitable clash of civilizations and resurrects a forgotten history of mutual curiosity and cultural cross-pollination between the East and West. It’s unfortunate, then, that he reduces Zionism and Zionists to a cog in the machinations of Western power politics, rather than presenting a more complex, messy, and accurate picture of competing narratives and their impact on American policy making. His pat simplification undermines his otherwise commendable effort to defuse the "mutual incomprehension" and "mutual demonization" between the U.S. and the Arab world. (July)