As the first general introduction to the musical worlds of the successor states to Soviet Central Asia, this admirable work fills an important gap. Moreover, it does so in an individual and highly attractive way, eschewing the would-be objectivity of a dryly analytical monograph in favor of a looser framework of travel accounts, each rich in specific and revelatory detail but, at the same time, developing a series of thematic constants. To cover all of Central Asia in this way would have been an impossible task, however, and what we are presented with is in essence an exploration of widely separated and contrasting urban and rural areas of Uzbekistan supplemented by forays into northern Tajikistan. Beginning in Tashkent, the itinerary proceeds successively through Bukhara, Surxandarya, and Qashkandarya in the south, and Khorezm; then to Tajikistan (the Upper Zaravshan and Yagnâb, and Shahristan); and finally (following the fortunes of Bukharan Jewish émigré musicians) to New York.

Taha Husain remains a pivotal figure in modern Arab and Egyptian cultural life even after his death in 1973. The present work successfully attempts to study his educational journey and treatment of the cultural encounter between the East and the West. It begins by criticizing Taha's admirers who assume a consistent writer and fail to see that under the surface, “Taha's thought is riddled with all sorts of tension and ambivalence.” It also criticizes the structuralist methodology used lately to study Taha's critical thought because it presupposes that this thought underwent no essential change. Abdelrashid Mahmoudi rather employs a historical methodology in which chronological order is combined with change and development.

The attempt to put into words what is fundamentally a visual experience confronts this reviewer with an enormous challenge. Being neither artist nor art critic, I must approach the task through my lens as friend and long-time admirer of Gazbia Hassan Sirry, one of Egypt's leading modern artists, whose varied and innovative artistic career spans more than fifty years. Perhaps in this way I can create a context within which this book can be read, appreciated, and, I hope, used by those scholars who are interested in the dialectic between art and society, artist and social transformation.

In this slim volume, Mohammed Sawaie has expanded and enhanced his earlier work in the field of the lexical history of Arabic. By focusing primarily on the efforts of two distinguished Arab lexicographers, (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq and Rifa[ayn]a Rafi[ayn] al-Tahtawi, Sawaie creates a lucid and readable discourse on the state of the Arabic language in the 19th century. He includes material from original contemporary Arabic sources as well as from European writers. Sawaie gives a detailed account of the challenges faced by Arab writers and scholars as their countries were flooded with new ideas. Western innovations in areas already familiar, such as agriculture, as well as modern technological developments created an immediate need for new words to describe and explain these novel concepts.

This book purports to be a study of Turkish foreign policy and decision-making in the post–World War II era. The author declares that her book “explores the contention that Turkish foreign policy has been greatly affected by the end of the cold war” (p. xi). She also “examines the argument that the . . . removal of the Soviet threat diminished Turkey's strategic importance for the United States and Western Europe” and led “Turkish policymakers . . . to search for new foreign policy partners” (p. xxii). Finally, Çelik suggests that the changed environment of the post–Cold War era entailed a shift from reliance on military power for the maintenance of national security to an emphasis on economic resources and relations.

One of the central political challenges facing numerous African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries over the past half-century has been how best to maneuver successfully through the related, but not necessarily parallel, processes of creating and articulating a national identity, achieving independence from colonial rule, and developing predictable and legitimate institutions of governance (that is, state formation). How a national community elects to approach these formidable tasks is influenced by a plethora of factors, including the constraints and opportunities represented by the international and regional environment and the attributes of key leaders. Understanding this phenomenon is not simply an academic exercise, as the strategies pursued may have a significant impact on the shape the eventual state takes.

This work is a follow-up to Michael Gunter's earlier book, The Kurds of Iraq: Tragedy and Hope (St. Martin's Press, 1992). In that book, which was published shortly after the first democratic elections in Iraqi Kurdistan and the subsequent establishment of the Kurdish regional government (KRG), Gunter was somewhat optimistic about the prospects for realizing Kurdish national aspirations in Iraq. The book under review, however, strikes a more pessimistic tone based on political developments in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990s. The main focus of the book is on the causes of continuing conflict between the two major Iraqi Kurdish parties—namely, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—since the end of the 1991 Gulf War and the establishment of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. The author uses a variety of sources, including interviews with principal Kurdish players and English-language publications.

I must admit that when I first read this book, I didn't like it. As the footnotes quickly indicate, the bulk of the research derives from secondary sources, either from the Israeli and Western press or from FBIS/WNC translations from the Arabic press. Virtually no interview material is used—strange, indeed, when one considers that the author lives within an hour of almost all the major political actors discussed in the study. And although some reference is made to public-opinion polls, it is disappointing that greater use has not been made of the voluminous survey data collected by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center—the richest such troves in the Arab world.