<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-9">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1528" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Sylfaen><STRONG>Keith David Watenpaugh,"Being
Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab
Middle Class"<BR>Princeton University Press, 2006<BR></STRONG><BR>Cloth | $35.00
/ £22.95 | ISBN: 0-691-12169-9 - 344 pp. | 6 x 9| 9 halftones. 6 tables. 3
maps.<BR><BR></FONT><A
href="http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8210.html"><FONT
face=Sylfaen>http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8210.html</FONT></A><BR><BR><FONT
face=Sylfaen>In this innovative book, Keith Watenpaugh connects the question of
modernity to the formation of the Arab middle class. The book explores the rise
of a middle class of liberal professionals, white-collar employees, journalists,
and businessmen during the first decades of the twentieth century in the Arab
Middle East and the ways its members created civil society, and new forms of
politics, bodies of thought, and styles of engagement with
colonialism.<BR><BR>Discussions of the middle class have been largely absent
from historical writings about the Middle East. Watenpaugh fills this lacuna by
drawing on Arab, Ottoman, British, American and French sources and an eclectic
body of theoretical literature and shows that within the crucible of the Young
Turk Revolution of 1908, World War I, and the advent of late European
colonialism, a discrete middle class took shape. It was defined not just by the
wealth, professions, possessions, or the levels of education of its members, but
also by the way they asserted their modernity.<BR><BR>Using the ethnically and
religiously diverse middle class of the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, Syria, as a
point of departure, Watenpaugh explores the larger political and social
implications of what being modern meant in the non-West in the first half of the
twentieth century. Well researched and provocative, "Being Modern in the Middle
East" makes a critical contribution not just to Middle East history, but also to
the global study of class, mass violence, ideas, and revolution.<BR><BR>Keith
David Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of Modern Islamic Studies at the
University of California, Davis. Currently, he is also the George S. and Dolores
Doré Eccles Fellow in Democracy and Diversity at the Tanner Humanities Center of
the University of Utah and he has been a visiting scholar at Harvard
University's Center for Middle East Studies and Williams College.<BR><BR>He is
associate editor for the Bulletin of the Middle Eastern Studies Association and
a member of that organization’s Committee on Academic Freedom in the Middle East
and North Africa; he has published in the International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Social History, and Middle East
Report.<BR><BR>Endorsements:<BR><BR>"This is an original piece of scholarship
that addresses interesting questions about an understudied and important aspect
of Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean history. The product of a
lively mind fed by broad reading, the book treats the reader to moments of
wonderful insight based on new research."--Elizabeth F. Thompson, University of
Virginia<BR><BR>"A remarkable book. It represents a major departure in the
current historiography of the Middle East and is a significant contribution to
the field."--Peter Sluglett, University of
Utah<BR><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>