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Item Description

Once a voiceless region dominated by authoritarian rulers, the Arab world seems to have developed an identity of its own almost overnight. The series of uprisings that began in 2010 profoundly altered politics in the region, forcing many experts to drastically revise their understandings of the Arab people. Yet while the Arab uprisings have indeed triggered seismic changes, Arab public opinion has been a perennial but long ignored force influencing events in the Middle East.

In The World Through Arab Eyes, eminent political scientist (and Springbrook parent) Shibley Telhami draws upon a decade’s worth of original polling data, probing the depths of the Arab psyche to analyze the driving forces and emotions of the Arab uprisings and the next phase of Arab politics. In astonishing detail and with great humanity, Telhami identifies the key prisms through which Arabs view issues central to their everyday lives, from democracy to religion to foreign relations with Iran, Israel, the United States, and other world powers. The World Through Arab Eyes reveals the hearts and minds of a people often misunderstood but ever more central to our globalized world.

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Item Special Note

“Too much debate on the future of the Arab world is based on outdated ideas about what Arabs want. In The World Through Arab Eyes, Shibley Telhami captures the prisms through which Arabs see the world. He combines the knowledge and perspective of a major scholar with a treasure trove of Arab public opinion. This book will be valuable to anyone hoping to understand this rapidly changing region.”
—Jimmy Carter

“Not since Edward Said’s Orientalism has a scholar so effectively distilled the Arab collective self and its complex relations to ‘the others’, as Shibley Telhami has in The World Through Arab Eyes. Unlike hundreds of speculative books written about Arabs and Muslims since 9/11, Telhami has meticulously managed to get the Arabs to tell their stories in facts and figures—providing crisp analysis along the way. The book is a must read for students, scholars, policy makers, and anyone interested in the Middle East.”
—Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egyptian Sociologist and Human Rights Activist

“A powerful and definitive guide to Arab attitudes, answering questions that Americans have posed since 9/11. Eschewing hyperbole and drama, Shibley Telhami systematically dissects Arab views about themselves and their identity, toward Israel and the United States, and regarding democracy, women’s rights, and the uprisings. Policy makers must read this book, and so too should Americans still puzzled by the politics and attitudes of Arabs.”
—Daniel Kurtzer, Daniel S. Abraham Professor in Middle East Policy Studies, Princeton University, and former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Israel

“America’s leading interpreter of the Arab world, always judicious in his judgments and penetrating in his analysis, has written a book that every American concerned with the challenges that American foreign policy faces in the Middle East should read.”
—Zbigniew Brzezinski