A History of the Modern Middle East: Rulers, Rebels, and Rouges is a new undergraduate history textbook written by Betty S. Anderson which draws extensively from recent scholarship in the field. The textbook, which presents the history of the region in ten chapters with a prologue and an epilogue, was developed to align with the structure of a standard survey course in Middle East history. It begins with a brief synopsis of the origins of Islam before addressing the founding of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 through 10 progress chronologically from the 19th century to the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world. A History of the Modern Middle East is not a reference text. Instead, it uses the experiences of “rulers,” “rebels,” and “rouges,” as an organizing framework for understanding the social, political, and economic transformations of the last 225 years in the Middle East. Anderson is a committed educator who has clearly thought about how to compress the region's complicated history into a semester for her students; the textbook presents her method of teaching Middle Eastern history to a wider audience.

Focusing on rulers, rebels, and rouges enables Anderson to present both micro and macro histories of the region. Anderson defines “rulers” as the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, their successor states, and the foreign powers that intervened in the region. Throughout the text she addresses how rulers established and maintained their power and authority in the systems of government found in the region between 1800 and the present day. “Rebels” are the populations that “completely opposed the leadership and systems of governance ruling over them” (p. xviii). The category of “rebel” encompasses Kurds, Armenians, Palestinians, military leaders who staged coups in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and religious leaders such as Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. Anderson designates “rogues” as “those actors who challenged their leadership to reform state governance or who used their challenge as the means for gaining positions within the state” (p. xix). Therefore, the Young Turks, the students, professionals, and workers who protested European colonialism, and the protesters who partook in the Green Revolution, the Arab Spring, and the Gezi Park protests are all classed as rouges in Anderson's text. In sum, rulers rule, rebels overthrow governments, and rogues (attempt) reform.

While they do not always fit neatly into the rulers-rebels-rouge framework foregrounded by Anderson, the text also addresses the histories of women, workers, religious minorities, and the non-elites that are often glossed over in other survey texts. Integrating these voices alongside those of the rulers and those contesting the rulers is one of the textbook's greatest assets. However, the presence of historical actors who are not clearly rulers, rebels, or rogues, reveals the limitations of the text's guiding framework. In theory, using rulers, rebels, and rogues to help tell the history of the modern Middle East would be a fabulous way of integrating individuals into a political history of the region. However, in practice the rulers, rebels, and rouges referenced in the text's title are not fleshed out as historical actors, leaving the reader without a clear sense of the individuals who shaped the region's history. Perhaps a better subtitle for the text would have been, albeit less alliterative, “systems of rule, rebellion, and protest” as the text expertly records those interlocking histories throughout a wider geographic area than most existing texts.

The text focuses on Egypt, Israel-Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran while also representing the changing roles that Britain, France, Russia/USSR, and the United States have played in the region since the early 19th century. While some textbooks telescope in and out of Iran and Turkey during times of political upheaval and some even neglect post-Ottoman Anatolia altogether, Anderson commendably carries the histories of Turkey and Iran throughout the text to the present day. Anderson's increased emphasis on Jordanian history, which is often distilled to outline in other texts, is also welcomed. Furthermore, Anderson explores the Ottoman legacy in the Balkans, which is rarely addressed in existing teaching resources. While A History of the Modern Middle East brings attention to some countries and regions not as thoroughly addressed in other textbooks, such as the Balkans, it does not deviate much from standard textbook conventions which emphasize the Eastern Mediterranean at the expense of North Africa and the Gulf apart from Saudi Arabia. The textbook does not critically engage the idea or concept of the “Middle East.”

Anderson's A History of the Modern Middle East presents a rich array of sixty-five visual primary sources and twenty-three maps. Images range from portraits of leaders to women on the silk factory floor to infrastructure development projects to protesters with banners unfurled. The images do not live up to their pedagogical potential, however, as the visual sources are not fully integrated into the text (Anderson is not alone in letting the images in a textbook speak for themselves). As with textual sources, it would have been ideal to reference the images in the text or to raise questions about them so that students were encouraged to critically engage them, rather than view the images, and especially the photographs, as a representation of a historical “truth.” A critical awareness about images is especially important in an era when students encounter more images than ever before but are not taught to think critically about them. The text does not include any textual primary sources.

One of the greatest strengths of the textbook is the degree to which Anderson incorporates a wide range of recent scholarship in the field into the history she presents of the region. Anderson aimed to create a text that “pivots between general representations of governing practices—focusing on shared patterns across borders—and deeper studies of the actions and motivations of individual groups located in the academic monographs of my colleagues” (p. xx). Ultimately, the strengths and weaknesses of Anderson's text reflect those in the field of Middle East history in general. For example, Anderson provides a page and a half of historical context on World War II in the Middle East compared with a full chapter on World War I. This discrepancy was likely shaped by the wars’ different legacies on the region's history and also by the significant amount of scholarship produced around the centennial of World War I. Scholars have not yet turned their attention to exploring the legacy of World War II in the Eastern Mediterranean. Each chapter is accompanied by an extensive bibliography that is an excellent resource for students and reveals the depth of the scholarship synthesized in the textbook.

Depending on the needs of students and the level of the survey course, this textbook could be assigned on its own or it could be paired with a reference text or selected secondary source readings referenced in the textbook. The textbook does not include a glossary, but instead makes use of “boxes,” which spotlight the people, places, ideas, treaties, and commodities the author saw as influential. “Macedonia,” “Sharifians,” “Women Performers in Cairo,” and “Student Activism at the American University in Beirut” are among the 31 boxed items. For intro survey courses tasked with covering the rise of political Islam, an additional source would be required as Anderson only briefly introduces Hasan al-Banna and other thought leaders of the movement, arguably some of the region's most influential rebels and rogues.

Some of the chapters and especially “Chapter 7, Military Coups: Politics and Violence: Iran, Turkey, and the Arab States, 1952–1980” and “Chapter 8, Cold War Battles: The Suez Crisis, Arab-Israeli Conflicts, and the Lebanese Civil War” are organized thematically rather than chronologically, making them difficult to assign to first- and second-year undergraduate students who routinely ask for help making sense of concurrent events in the region's history. The chapters do, however, treat the social and political histories of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in greater detail than is found in other textbooks.

A History of the Modern Middle East: Rulers, Rebels, and Rogues is a welcome new addition to the textbooks available in Middle Eastern history. While adopting a new textbook requires a pedagogical commitment, it is worth reviewing the text to see if it aligns with your course structure and learning objectives, especially because of its emphasis on populations that are overlooked or sidebarred in other textbooks. Whether you adopt the text or not, Anderson's textbook compels us to return to our syllabi and analyze the voices and perspectives we privilege in our Middle East history courses.