This ought to be the introductory text for those interested in the politics, economics, and society of the Middle East and North Africa from the macro-level. It is expansive, with chapters ranging from political typology, social movements, resource allocation, and demography to food/water, trade, war, Islamism, and much more. In fact, I’d go so far to say that it’s comprehensive.

I took much longer with this book than I thought I would, if for no other reason than the density of each page, and I found it illuminating. This sort of political economy is one of my blind spots, and it helped me to fill in a lot of gaps.

The authors begin with a glance to the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world and ask “how did this happen?” The chapters are then arranged thematically, with an eye to comparison between Middle Eastern states (Turkey, Iran, and Israel are included here) as well as other middle-income countries around the world. In each chapter, there are a number of sections that deal with specific sub-themes, and a longer section that looks at individual country case studies. This way of organizing the book made a lot of sense and made it far more readable than it might otherwise have been.

Highly, highly recommend.