Lexington Books
Pages: 250
•
Trim: 5½ x 8½
978-0-7391-2561-8 • Hardback • February 2008 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-0-7391-2562-5 • Paperback • February 2008 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-1-4616-3366-2 • eBook • February 2008 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
Paul J. Rich is president of the Policy Studies Organization in Washington, D.C., a society of more than 3,000 universities and institutions, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was the head of Supervisory Programs for the Ministry of Education and Culture in Qatar for twelve years. Dr. Rich is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, recipient of the Cameron Medal for social science research, and Life Governor of Harris Manchester College in the University of Oxford.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Introduction to the Lexington Edition
Chapter 3 The Arab of Mesopotamia
Although these fascinating essays by a woman who played a key role in British empire-building in Mesopotamia were written in 1916 and 1917, their republication nearly a century later is remarkably timely, as Paul Rich shows in his introduction to the volume. In many ways, Bell might seem to be writing about the Bush administration's imperial misadventure at the beginning of the 21st century, when self-proclaimed liberators, like those who preceded them, soon found that they too were occupiers facing violent resistance. We see how little those living today learned from the past and how, at least in this case, history is being reenacted?in Marx's words?as farce...
— Glenn E. Perry, Indiana State University
Bell's work is an important historical document and a work that deserves attention today....Rich has offered readers an important document and provided a passionate appeal in his introduction to it.
— Digest of Middle East Studies, Spring 2009
Gertrude Bell, the British maker of Iraq, appreciated what was then Mesopotamia and the danger of military confrontation in that divided country. Her book and the introduction by Paul Rich should be a required reading for occupiers of present day Iraq and the policy makers in Washington and London.
— Mohammed M. Aman, editor-in-chief, Digest of Middle East Studies
Although these fascinating essays by a woman who played a key role in British empire-building in Mesopotamia were written in 1916 and 1917, their republication nearly a century later is remarkably timely, as Paul Rich shows in his introduction to the volume. In many ways, Bell might seem to be writing about the Bush administration's imperial misadventure at the beginning of the 21st century, when self-proclaimed liberators, like those who preceded them, soon found that they too were occupiers facing violent resistance. We see how little those living today learned from the past and how, at least in this case, history isbeing reenacted—in Marx's words—as farce.
— Glenn E. Perry, Indiana State University