A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.
Another damning exposé on the authoritarian crown prince of a problematic state.
Al-Rasheed, a longtime Saudi expat scholar and professor living in London, makes an important addition to the literature on Mohammed bin Salman (often known as MBS), offering a surgical delineation of his repressive measures in the name of "reform"—while arguing that real reform is possible. The charming prince, who assumed the role of heir-designate in 2017, was seen as a modernizer and reformer, and he has both celebrated and hindered the aspirations of young Saudis. Before the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the Western press mostly celebrated MBS, allowing him a sliver of legitimacy as he simultaneously promoted his purge of opponents and seduced the public with more liberal entertainment policies. The author, who displays keen knowledge of her former home, looks deeply at some of the troubling and persistent currents plaguing MBS's Saudi Arabia: a new populist nationalism, which she believes "covers up" nefarious economic, social, and regional policies of the crown prince; persistent tribalism and celebration of tribal purity; and the consistent targeting of the Saudi feminist movement. The chapter entitled "Women and Rights" is an excellent examination of a contradictory element that is ever present in the prince's policy: the ostensible empowerment of women (allowing them to drive and be more visible) versus punishment for chafing against the paternalistic "guardianship system." Al-Rasheed is especially familiar with the Saudi diaspora and the increased activism since the murder of Khashoggi. All of these developments, she writes, "puncture the official narrative about Muhammad bin Salman’s modern new Saudi Arabia." However, the author notes that low oil prices, continued war in Yemen, the erosion of state services and salaries, and the ravages of the pandemic may prompt Saudis to challenge the policies of the prince. Read this one alongside Bradley Hope’s Blood and Oil and Ben Hubbard’s MBS.
A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-755814-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.
Custer died for your sins. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism.
Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward; Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. For one thing, while “Indian” isn’t bad, since “[i]ndigenous individuals and peoples in North America on the whole do not consider ‘Indian’ a slur,” “American” is due to the fact that it’s “blatantly imperialistic.” Just so, indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a “colonialist settler-state” (the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today) and then “displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated”—after, that is, having been forced to live in “concentration camps.” Were he around today, Vine Deloria Jr., the always-indignant champion of bias-puncturing in defense of native history, would disavow such tidily packaged, ready-made, reflexive language. As it is, the readers who are likely to come to this book—undergraduates, mostly, in survey courses—probably won’t question Dunbar-Ortiz’s inaccurate assertion that the military phrase “in country” derives from the military phrase “Indian country” or her insistence that all Spanish people in the New World were “gold-obsessed.” Furthermore, most readers won’t likely know that some Ancestral Pueblo (for whom Dunbar-Ortiz uses the long-abandoned term “Anasazi”) sites show evidence of cannibalism and torture, which in turn points to the inconvenient fact that North America wasn’t entirely an Eden before the arrival of Europe.
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0040-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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