The Arabs: A history, by Eugene Rogan, has just been published in hardback. The various reviews present it as an important work, perhaps even as a successor to Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples -- respected, but now somewhat long in the tooth. Hourani was Rogan's "mentor", whatever that means, but the younger historian has concentrated mainly on media and historical circumstances, in contrast to Hourani's excursions into "demography, trading patterns and literature".
Sadly, the reviews in the Guardian and Telegraph concentrate on the Arabs' contact and conflict with the West. I'm hoping this is just an artefact of the British newspaper industry, not of a narrow focus in the book itself.
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