This 1997 book was written by a professor based in Bulgaria. It seeks to answer the question of why the Ottoman rule rose and fell in the Arabian Gulf. “The Ottoman Gulf – The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar”, published by Columbia University Press, is a unique contribution in that its sources are […]
I opened Joshua Mitchell’s “Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age” (original 2013 by UChicago Press, reprint in 2023 with Encounter Books) skeptical. The author spent 3 years in Qatar in the mid-2000s and runs the risk of pretending to a be country expert (as many fly-in fly-out scholars have done). Fortunately, I […]
What particular challenges do “small states” have and what options might they employ to overcome them? Building out of a collaborative teaching class, Miller and Al-Marri (2022) wrote “Overcoming Smallness”. The book offers a useful introduction to the literature on small states, with Chapter 1 on what small states are (and debates about that), Chapters 2 and 3 […]
Tags: #Fahad Al-Marri #Overcoming Smallness #Qatar #Rory Miller #Small states
Qatar has unique traits that make some areas of inquiry particularly relevant. That the citizen population is a minority and that there are so many international K-12 schools as well as international university branch campuses, the country is very well suited to explore education, identity and language questions. Wisam Abdul-Jabbar edited a 2025 book delving […]
Tags: #Education #Inclusion #Interculturally #Interculture #Qatar
Published by I.B. Tauris, “New Military Strategies in the Gulf: The Mirage of Autonomy in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar” (2023) by Jean-Loup Samaan offers a unique analysis of the changing military directions of the Gulf (focusing on those three nations). There are many books that do a poor job covering the region, this […]
Compared to other regions, there are few books about the GCC, and specifically Qatar. I try to track new publications and I came across “Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States” by Scott J. Weiner (2022), which was published by Edinburgh University Press. The book is covers Kuwait, Oman and Qatar (the latter less so compared […]
In 2023, Tusiani and Johnson wrote “From Black Gold to Frozen Gas: How Qatar Became an Energy Superpower”, published by Columbia University Press, in the Center on Global Energy Policy Series. The book provides a unique and detailed look into the deal, actors, contracts of the development of the energy sector in Qatar, often interwoven […]
For anyone interested to see Qatar, as opposed to read about it (which most of the Reading Qatar list is), a new publication offers such a presentation. Titled “The Power of Culture” (2022), the book is written by al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who is the Chairperson of Qatar Museums, Doha Film Institute, Reach Out […]
Tags: #al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani #Culture #Qatar #The Power of Culture
New OPEN ACCESS book Sustainable Qatar: Social, Political and Environmental Perspectives Available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-7398-7 Abstract: This open access book provides a topical overview of the key sustainability issues in Qatar, focusing on environmental sustainability from a socio-political perspective. The transition to a sustainable Qatar requires engagement with diverse areas of social-political, human, and environmental development. On the […]
Tags: #Middle East #Qatar #Sustainability #Sustainable Qatar #Transition
In 2017 the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain launched a land, sea, and air blockade of the State of Qatar. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (author of more than ten books on the region) documents the blockade in “Qatar and the Gulf Crisis” (2019). The author notes in the text that the writing of the book […]