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Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
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About This Book
Black Wave is a paradigm-shifting recasting of the modern history of the Middle East, telling the largely unexplored story of the rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran--a rivalry born out of the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution--that has dramatically transformed the culture, identity, and collective memory of millions of Muslims over four decades. Kim Ghattas follows everyday citizens whose lives have been affected by the geopolitical drama. Most Americans assume that extremism, Sunni-Shia antagonism, and anti-Americanism have always existed in the Middle East, but prior to 1979, Saudi Arabia and Iran were working allies. It was only after that year--a remarkable turning point--that Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia began to use religion as a tool in their competition for dominance in the region, igniting the culture wars that led to the 1991 American invasion of Iraq, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS. Ghattas shows how Saudi Arabia and Iran went from allies against the threat of communism from Russia, with major roles in the US anti-Soviet strategy, to mortal enemies that use religious conservatism to incite division and unrest from Egypt to Pakistan.
Reviews
"The headlines from the Middle East make a little more sense through the lens Ghattas provides."
"The book is packed with accounts of ambition, treachery and cruelty—with a wealth of historical detail down to the hour of the day ..."
"...a fascinating and winding but highly readable tale ..."
"Kim Ghattas has not only drawn the big picture of how those events shaped the region but offers timely and thought-provoking insights into their continuing destructive influence."
"It is also a post-Arab-Spring follow-up to the question posed by Bernard Lewis, the British-American historian of Islam, in his landmark 2002 book What Went Wrong?"
"...[a] sweeping and authoritative history ..."
"Ghattas puts her faith in a younger generation."
"Illuminating, conversational, rich in details and like nothing else you've ever read about the Middle East, Black Wave will leave you with a new understanding of this diverse and troubled region."
"Black Wave is a sobering testament to all those who have dreamt of a different Middle East, and sometimes paid with their lives for it."
"Most of this history is well-known, and almost every chapter's historical episode already has multiple books in English written about it."
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