Publications
Modern Middle East portrayed in book coedited
by Edmund Burke III
By Scott Rappaport
The second edition of Struggle and Survival in the Modern
Middle East, coedited by UCSC history professor Edmund (Terry)
Burke III and David Yaghoubian, was published in December by
the University of California Press. The book features 24 biographical
portraits of Middle Eastern men and women from the mid-19th
century to the present.
Edmund Burke III
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Now updated and revised, the second edition contains a new
section, "Contemporary Lives," with six added portraits
from the post-1990 era. The book is widely used in courses on
modern Middle Eastern history. As the Times Literary Supplement
noted: "This book succeeds splendidly in its objective
of challenging simplistic views of the Middle Eastern past.
Muslims and Jews, women and workers, are shown not just to be
'marionettes in the historical drama,' in Burke's words, but
active agents in influencing the passage of their lives."
The Independent added that the mini-biographies “are
all fascinating” with “enough plot, character, intrigue,
and drama to inspire any novelist." Burke is the director
of UCSC's Center for World History, which is sponsoring a lecture
series during winter and spring quarters titled "Itineraries
in the Muslim Mediterranean, 1350-1950: Individuals, Change
and Memory in a World Region" (see Currents
news brief).
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