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July 2016 Vol. 53 No. 11

Fraser (emer., history, Ulster Univ., Ireland; Fulbright Scholar, Indiana Univ. South Bend) edited this collection of important, well researched essays on topics relating to a period that in many ways created today’s Middle East— notably, its political map and many of its problems.  Fraser’s excellent, informative introductory chapter focuses on the period ending in 1923, but several contributors go considerably beyond that date, and there is much emphasis on the lasting impact of these years on shaping national identities (and “toxic sectarianism”).  One contributor makes cogent points about how immediate post–Great War events led to the recent emergence of the Islamic State in the Fertile Crescent.  This volume typifies the miscellaneous nature of collections of papers growing out of conferences, but all the essays represent scholarship of high quality (though in a few passages, additional copy editing would have been desirable).  Specialists in a wide variety of disciplines will find valuable analyses of such topics as wartime hunger and how it has been remembered, some key literary figures, the status of women, oil, and much more on the rise of nationalist movements.

--G. E. Perry, Indiana State University (emeritus)

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.