This biography of Kuwait's twelfth al-Sabah ruler is also a history of the country from the early years of the 20th century until the death of Emir Sabah al-Salim in 1977. Jarman's book, enhanced by the inclusion of both al-Sabah family and official photographs, is based on extensive research in British and American documents and includes material acquired through conversations with al-Sabah family members. In his acknowledgments, Jarman expresses gratitude to Emir Sabah's daughter, Shaikhah Hussah Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah. In the book's Foreword, the Kuwaiti diplomat Abdullah Bishara writes: “[w]e have tried in this book to present Shaikh Sabah's political legacy in every domain he involved himself in” (p. xix). Hence, at the very outset the reader is on notice that Jarman's work is likely to be a hymn of praise to Emir Sabah (p. 224). Indeed, it is, but at the same time Jarman provides the reader with an interesting picture of the history of Kuwait and its development from a poor desert shaykhdom, to an oil-rich independent state.

Although Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority society in the world, Western historiography has downplayed the role of Islamic actors and ideals in the development of the country's nationalism. Echoing earlier Dutch accounts, most historians present Indonesian nationalism as a product of the joint efforts of expatriate students in Holland and Dutch-educated elites in the East Indies. Both groups, the conventional narrative goes, promoted secular notions of ethnicity, language, and territory, at first creating regional ethno-nationalisms (Javanese, Sundanese, Minangkabau, etc.) rather than an encompassing Indonesian form. Under the twin influence of Dutch schooling and colonial subjugation, the elite proponents of these ethno-nationalisms eventually fused their varied ambitions into a single nationalist project. Islam, however, never became more than a background accessory to the larger whole.

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews is Benny Morris's latest scholarly endeavor to shed light on the events surrounding the 1948 Palestine war. Although, as he notes in his Introduction, it was in Jordan where Glubb, a British general-on-loan to (Trans)Jordan from 1930 to 1956 and leader of the Jordanian Arab Legion, made his main contribution to history, Morris focuses on how Glubb Pasha's actions affected Zionists during the Mandate period and, subsequently, in the State of Israel. The main point of departure for Morris is the notion that Glubb may have been anti-Semitic, thus adversely affecting the Zionists' efforts to establish their state. Yet in reading this book, the reader should pay careful attention to the author's approach, his choice of sources, and his political priorities, all of which inform the book and call into question the allegation of anti-Semitism.

Studies on people on the move have recently gained new impetus, whether looked at from a migration, diaspora, or transnational angle. While dislocations, imagined sites, and belongings constituted virtually have sometimes made places disappear entirely, the idea that people on the move neither “belong” to where they came from nor should be viewed from a narrow nationalistic angle have become evident. Focus has been directed on everyday life and family formation in multi-localities, with people on the move, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. In the Middle Eastern context, people in a transnational state have become an important field where notions of family, gender, and citizenship are contested and theoretically re-evaluated.

Shahla Haeri would like to know why Muslim women who are accessible and visible in their own societies remain invisible in the West. Why have they failed to capture the interest of anthropologists, the media, and the public, in contrast to veiled Muslim women? Dismayed that despite the growing academic literature on Muslim women much of it still focuses on the veil and peasant women, Haeri seeks to document the lives of professional Pakistani women. While anthropologists have become more self-reflexive and critical of their relationship to their subjects over the past few decades, Haeri challenges them to rethink their focus on the subaltern. Deliberately focusing on educated and professional women of similar status to herself, she proposes a new ethnographic model, “shared ethnography,” which she demonstrates through her interviews with six Pakistani women, a methodology emerging from dialogues and collaboration with her subjects. Seeking to make professional Pakistani women visible, the title of the book, No Shame for the Sun, refers to women out in the public sphere, unabashed and in the sun, despite the multiple structures that render them invisible—be they veils, gender-role expectations, or academic discourses.