International Journal of Middle East Studies: Volume 49 -

Reza Zia Ebrahimi , The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). Pp. 312. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780231175760
Golnar Nikpour
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20 April 2017, pp. 347-349
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THE AMERICAN WAR FOR THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST: FROM DIPLOMACY TO MILITARY INTERVENTION
Craig Daigle
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16 October 2017, pp. 757-765
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Emblazoned across the front page of The New York Times on Sunday, 15 November 1981 was a large photograph of hundreds of US soldiers from the army's 82nd Airborne Division parachuting into the vast western desert of the Sinai Peninsula. The photo was eerily reminiscent of the images from October 1956 when Israeli soldiers dropped into the same desert as part of their effort, along with British and French forces, to topple the government of Egyptian President Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir. But the American soldiers were on a much different mission. Rather than attempting to bring down Egypt's government, they were there to participate, alongside Egyptian forces, in “Operation Bright Star,” the largest American military exercise in the Middle East since World War II. During the next ten days, more than 6,000 US soldiers participated in the “war games,” which stretched from Egypt to Sudan, Somalia, and Oman, at an estimated cost of more than 50 million dollars (157 million dollars in current figures). On 25 November, the penultimate day of the operation, a half dozen American B-52s flying from North Dakota dropped a cluster of bombs over the Egyptian desert and then returned home on a thirty-two-hour journey without stopping, demonstrating the vast reach of the American military.

Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar , Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2016). Pp. 273. $85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780804781237
Julie Peteet
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26 July 2017, pp. 547-549
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL TURN IN MIDDLE EAST HISTORY
George R. Trumbull IV
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20 January 2017, pp. 173-180
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If historians of the Middle East have turned their attention to the environment rather later than those in other subfields, a recent crop of books indicates that a new generation of scholars has spent much productive time considering environmental histories of other geographies. The books reviewed in this essay stand out for their insistence on examining Middle Eastern environments as both ecological facts and representational spaces. Taken in concert, they indicate the vibrancy of environmental history in the field. Moreover, their careful attention to methodology and creative use of sources opens up spaces for new investigations of politics, culture, and religion as mediated through environmental management and representation. Following on the recent work of Diana K. Davis, Edmund Burke III, and others, these historians have marshaled environmental, climatological, epidemiological, biological, and geological data for historical argument. Thus, the resulting works situate themselves deeply within their respective historiographic narratives, yet also interrupt, redelineate, and unsettle those narrative assumptions. At its best, the so-called “environmental turn” in the history of the Middle East represents not an intellectual fashion, but rather a major methodological shift that involves a reframing of our understanding of the formation of the field.