Rating: 
Summary: a look inside
Review: (...) I know very little about Arabic literature and poetry, and I have not read extensively about the "Middle East." Once the bar is set at that level, however, I found this book quite approachable.The Dream Palace of the Arabs focusses on a particular time and space in the Arab world--the brief rise of Nasserism and nationalism generally and its subsequent collapse into bitterness. There is much great contemporary relavance in this 1998 work. Ajami gives us Beirut and Lebanon, both before and during the terrible war; and he takes us into its rich literary world. He discusses the First and Second Gulf Wars [Iran-Iraq war and Desert Storm], explains the subtext of shia/sunni conflict, tells us a bit about Kuwait and a great deal about Saddam Hussein. My favorite part of the book is the chapter "In the Land of Egypt." The last chapter "The Orphaned Peace" takes us to the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, post-Oslo to the birth of the Palestinian Authority. Despite the tragedies and sorrows encountered in this book, I was left hopeful for peace. Not conventional history I suppose, but a fine intellectual history of the last half-century in the Arab world. Inspires me to read some Naguib Mahfuz, where I go next on my journey through amazon...
Rating:
Summary: a look inside
Review: (...) I know very little about Arabic literature and poetry, and I have not read extensively about the "Middle East." Once the bar is set at that level, however, I found this book quite approachable. The Dream Palace of the Arabs focusses on a particular time and space in the Arab world--the brief rise of Nasserism and nationalism generally and its subsequent collapse into bitterness. There is much great contemporary relavance in this 1998 work. Ajami gives us Beirut and Lebanon, both before and during the terrible war; and he takes us into its rich literary world. He discusses the First and Second Gulf Wars [Iran-Iraq war and Desert Storm], explains the subtext of shia/sunni conflict, tells us a bit about Kuwait and a great deal about Saddam Hussein. My favorite part of the book is the chapter "In the Land of Egypt." The last chapter "The Orphaned Peace" takes us to the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, post-Oslo to the birth of the Palestinian Authority. Despite the tragedies and sorrows encountered in this book, I was left hopeful for peace. Not conventional history I suppose, but a fine intellectual history of the last half-century in the Arab world. Inspires me to read some Naguib Mahfuz, where I go next on my journey through amazon...
Rating: 
Summary: It was OK
Review: A lot of the subject matter is poets and intellectuals in
the Arab countries and the extent to which they reflect the attitudes on a number of related subjects - secular vs religion, Israel vs Arab, democracy vs repression, modernity vs tradition. Interesting at times, maybe a little too focused on the literary at other times. Sometimes the reader has to work a bit to get something out of it. I'm not sure how much insight it gives in the end on the current popular mood in Arab
countries - depends on to what extent the intellectuals reflect that mood, I guess.
Rating: 
Summary: Uncle Tom
Review: As was written by another "(Fouad Ajami) has no axe to grind unlike Ed (sic) Said". True anough Ajami is far too busy being a perfect hound fetching and in his case delivering his master's newspaper. If you want to hear the message you expect to hear because it comforts you read this. But if you wish to know about what is out there give it a rain check
Rating:
Summary: Uncle Tom
Review: As was written by another "(Fouad Ajami) has no axe to grind unlike Ed (sic) Said". True anough Ajami is far too busy being a perfect hound fetching and in his case delivering his master's newspaper. If you want to hear the message you expect to hear because it comforts you read this. But if you wish to know about what is out there give it a rain check
Rating:
Summary: Insightful examination of the modern Middle East
Review: Because he lacks the flash and skill at sound bites of some of his more well known colleagues and does not crave to spend time on CNN, Professor Ajami?s work is frequently overlooked. That is a great loss for everyone trying to understand the Arab world, particularly in these times of growing tension and violence. Ajami asks a profound and much debated question, why did modernity seem to pass the Arab world by? ?Scholars,? such as Edward Said, argue that everything is the fault of the West and imperialism and that nothing intrinsic in Middle Eastern and Islamic culture deserve the blame. In contrast, Ajami takes seriously the fact that prior to the enlightenment, Islamic society was both intellectually and materially superior to West. Indeed, after World War II, with a fair number of Western educated citizens and a burgeoning middle class, many observers say the Middle East having a bright future, likely brighter in fact, than those currently economic and political successes, South Korea, Tiwan, and the other ?asian tigers.? What then, went wrong? Ajami points to Arab society never internalizing the nation state and that democratic values never gained currency beyond a small clique of intellectuals. Instead, such modern political ideas were seen as imperialist impositions, given little more than lip service. I disagree with Ajami on several points, most notably his rosy predictions for Egypt. Still, the work is well worth a serious read for any student of the Middle East.
Rating:
Summary: Requiem for Pan-Arabism
Review: Dream Palace of the Arabs : A Generation's Odyssey is a fascinating, sad look at a lost generation of Arab intellectuals. The author, Fouad Ajami, explores Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism through the lense of Arabic arts and letters. It starts off, naturally enough, with the 1982 suicide of Lebanese poet Khalil Hawi-an event that comes to symbolize the fate of the pro-modernization political-intellectual movement. It then moves on to an exploration of a generational divide-between Arab secular nationalists and the now dominant Islamists-through the art of Adonis, Sadiq al-Azm, Abdelrahman Munif, and Nizar Qabbani. With that as background, the author then provides a more detailed look at Egypt in the aftershock of Sadat's assassination; the novelist Naguib Mahfuz plays a central role in this chapter. Finally, the Arab reaction to Israel is revealingly illustrated through the writings and statements of a number of men (and one woman) of Arabic letters. Ajami, a nominally Eastern Orthodox Arab raised in Beirut and now teaching in America, is extremely well-suited for the task. He is himself a member of this generation and writes with exquisite pain and tenderness, and also with brutal honesty, revealing the seemingly missed potential of this lost generation's dreams. At times, particularly in the beginning which describes the fall of Lebanon, this is a difficult book to read; the grand ideas and the author's affection for old Lebanon are downright depressing reading when you know where it's all heading. In the later chapters, particularly the one dealing with the secular vs. Islamist divide and the Gulf War and the one addressing Israel and the various "peace processes", the mood is less tense-although perhaps this is because I personally feel less of a sense of loss over the rest of the Arab world than I do over Lebanon's demise. I've read quite a few articles and a number of books over the years that each attempted to shed light on the politics and modern history of the Arab world. This one, though, has been uniquely revealing to me as it is in large part the story as told by Arabs, to Arabs. Of course, this is largely the narrative belonging to the secularists born shortly after World War II, and their voices seem to hold very little sway in today's world. Still, to try to understand the culture and environment that produced Al Qaeda without listening to those doomed voices of the latter twentieth century would be like trying to fully understand the America of the late sixties and early seventies without knowing anything of World War II and the early Cold War. That analogy only goes so far, of course, but there is a similarity there in that both worlds produced generations of radical rejectionism; full comprehension demands that serious inquirers first go back to grasp what it was that was rejected. Add to that the power and importance in the Arab world of language and poetry, and it is easy to see that the author's approach is an extremely useful and informative one. For all these reasons, this book holds a place on my Warblogger's Bookshelf. By now, you should be able to tell that this book is not for everyone. If the examination of Arab poetry and the exploration of foreign intellectual movements make up your idea of torture in a foreign land, stay away. On the other hand, if, like me, you are fascinated by Arab culture and want to better understand the political failures underlying today's Middle East, then this will be an excellent and rewarding read for you.
Rating:
Summary: Not Really History
Review: I do not mean to imply by the title of this review that Ajami's book is "false" or polemical. Rather, I intend to warn readers that _The Dream Palace of the Arabs_ it is not a work of chronological accounting and crisp historical analysis. Instead, it is impressionistic and non-linear. Events are narrated as episodes in the life or from the perspective of a certain poet or political figure. This gives the book a dreamy, subjective quality. This, surely, is the point: not to answer a specific historical question, but to tell the tale of "a generation's odyssey", as the book's subtitle has it. The result is effective and haunting in its sense of disillusionment and frustration, and I recommend the book highly. The one caveat I offer is that the reader will get much more out of this book if s/he has already read at least some Middle Eastern history, and preferably a fair amount.
Rating:
Summary: Just OK...
Review: I found any of Tom Friedman's books to be an easier and more comprehensible read. I am not a full time student of the middle east, although I like Dr. Ajami.
Rating:
Summary: Just OK...
Review: I found any of Tom Friedman's books to be an easier and more comprehensible read. I am not a full time student of the middle east, although I like Dr. Ajami.
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