China’s Gilded Age (2020) by Yuen Yuen Ang is an accessible read that is well worth reading for multiple reasons. The book advances theoretical understandings on corruption and poverty, it presents creative methodologies that could inspire all sorts of new research, and presents unique findings that explain how China sustained high levels of economic growth […]
In Paul Farmer style, “Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History” (2020) weaves together personal encounters with life histories, colonial histories, and public health. This is well worth the read – all 653 pages of it. When I picked up this book, we got the unfortunate news of the passing of Dr […]
Haitham M. Alkhateeb published “Qatar: Political, Economic and Social Issues” (I published a similar book with the same publisher, in the same year, on Ethiopia). Unfortunately this publisher charges an unacceptably high rate for books (both this book and the one I edited sell for US$230), which makes them largely inaccessible to most readers. I […]
The classic history of Qatar was written by Rosemarie Said Zahlan in 1979, titled The Creation of Qatar. The author is the sister of Edward Said (yes, the Edward Said), and she also wrote a history of the UAE (in 1978) and the region (in 1998). Zahlan’s book is a reference / source book for […]
One of the benefits of being in Qatar, when reading books written on the country, is the ability to walk the shelves of the Qatar National Library and stumble upon gems that almost certainly would not be available outside of Qatar. One example of this is “Qatar’s Modern and Contemporary Development: Chapters of Political, Social […]
Of all the potential topics covered in books about Qatar, history takes a prominent role. One of these books is Habibur Rahman’s “The Emergence of Qatar: The Turbulent Years 1627-1916”, which was first published in 2005. At the time of its first publication, this book was one of the few histories of Qatar (after Zahlan’s […]
In 1068 Said al Andalusi wrote Kitaab Tabaqaat al ‘Umam, which was translated as “Book of the Categories of Nations”, which the translators of the 1991 version should be better translated as “Classifications of Nations” but kept with the norms of titling for this work. The book is a sort of reference for scholars, publications, […]
In the same year that Kamrava published his book on Qatar, Matthew Gray published Qatar: Politics and the Challenges of Development (2013). Kamrava’s book has about three times as many citations and seems to have become the go-to book on political issues in Qatar for the time period. Kamrava took a position at Georgetown University in […]
FIFA 2022: Qatar, The Legacy edited by Qoronfleh and Essa (2021) contains 24 chapters on a wide range of topics related to FIFA 2022 in Qatar. While chapters of this book look at FIFA in Qatar, there is much beyond the title. There are unique chapters on the role of sport on society in Qatar, gender and sport, sports infrastructure, crowd management, […]
In their books on the history of Qatar, Fromherz and Harkness do not include Arabic, Turkish, or Farsi sources, interestingly they also do not include English books that have been translated, such as Al-Ejli’s book, or original English books, as in Jassim the Leader, Founder of Qatar (2012) by Mohamed A. J. alThani (the author […]