I found a lecture series for purchase online that
is really helping me get perspective on what we
are seeing in the mideast.
Audio download 34.95 -
pop it on your computer or ipod.
pdf outline provided.
Got it for my wife who teaches Eastern Hemisphere,
but am listening myself while driving, working, etc.
Great for understanding the big events,
Balfour declaration, King David hotel bombing, Suez Crisis,
Creation of Israel...
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=8593&id=8593&d=United+States+and+the+Middle+East%3A+1914+to+9%2F11&pc=History%20-%20Modern------------
United States and the Middle East: 1914 to 9/11
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 8593
Taught by Salim Yaqub
University of California at Santa Barbara
Ph.D., Yale University
Step by step, with attention to the viewpoints and motivations of each nation and leader involved, the course explores, over a 90-year span:
-growing American involvement in the Middle East
-the ongoing quest for political independence and self-mastery by Middle Easterners
-the difficulty the U.S. has experienced in weighing diverse and conflicting objectives in the region, especially as the Cold War against the Soviet Union intensified
-the increasing antagonism between Americans and Middle Easterners that came to such a shocking culmination on September 11, 2001.
Over and over again, these themes surface, expressed in the actions of characters in a history still being written as we watch. America's presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush. George Kennan. David Ben-Gurion. Gamal Abdel Nasser. Mohammed Shah Pahlavi. Ariel Sharon. Yasser Arafat. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Menachem Begin. Saddam Hussein.