Droppin Middle East science

Covering Islam : how the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world -- Edward W. Said (if you're going to look into anything regarding all the coverage and how it's being framed, might as well start here)

The Saudis -- Sandra Mackay (while almost twenty years old, it explains the country and the monarchy quite well, I thought)

Both if I remember right have reasonably good bibliographies.

It's the difference between being un-American (simply different in outlook from) and being anti-American (self-consciously styled to be the antithesis of). Since about 1979 Islam has had no social or political agenda except to be 'that which is not American'. Therefore what was once simply a difference, and a welcome addition to all the differences in this pluralistic world, has become a 'toxic difference': different only from America, fundamentalist Islam since 1979 has attempted to destroy all the other differences surrounding it -- Buddhist statues, British writers, women, beardless men, etc.

Instead of adding to the supply of 'othernesses' in the world, this toxic difference, this so-called 'Islam' (in fact merely America's shadow) has become destructive and reductive.

Contrast Islam with the large number of young, western Muslims who identify strongly with African American culture.

The desert king, the life of ibn saud by david howarth is a great book about the founder of saudi Arabia. Its an amazing story. Very breify; In 1901, ibn saud, 21 years old and penniles, rode out on camelback from what is now Kuwait, accompanied by 40 men to reconquer his fathers kingdom. At his death, 50 years later, he was the undisputed ruler of most of Arabia and one of the richest men in the world. It also tells of British involvement with him and in the region, as well as the arrival of US oil companies. Kuwait, Iraq and certain borders of Saudi Arabia were of course drawn up by British guys in very dodgey shorts. More generally in the world read Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. by Chalmers Johnson.

Anything on the Saudi monarchy is a textbook example of how the West has interefered in the region seemingly for their own interest and therefore alienating much of the population.

There has been a real air of despair in his writing for some time now, I think he has been covering the Middle East for a long time and keeps seeing it getting worse and worse; even before the strike against America he was talking about how Israel and Palestine are on the brink of Armageddon.

I don't know if he has a Bumper Book of the Middle East, but he did write a book about Lebanon some years ago called something like "Pity the Nation - Lebanon at War".

Avi Shlaim's "The Iron Wall" is meant to be a good history of Israel and Israeli policy towards the Arab world.