The Making Of The Modern Middle East (a Personal History)

By (author) Bowen Jeremy
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A vivid and authoritative account of the Middle East''s recent history to the present day, from the BBC’s long-serving correspondent in the region.
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Now updated with a new chapter on the 7 October attacks and more.

A Sunday Times Paperback of the Year
A Spectator and New Statesman Book of the Year

‘An illuminating and riveting read’ – Jonathan Dimbleby
''Arresting . . . excellent, doom-freighted'' – The Times

Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present. In The Making of the Modern Middle East he offers a gripping and invaluable guide, showing how it came to be and what its future might hold.

In part based on his acclaimed podcast, ‘Our Man in the Middle East’, Bowen takes us on a journey across the Middle East and through its history. He meets ordinary men and women on the front line, and their leaders, whether brutal or benign. He explores the power games that have so often wreaked devastation on civilian populations as those leaders, whatever their motives, jostle for political, religious and economic control.

Clear throughout is Bowen’s deep understanding of the political, cultural and religious differences between countries as diverse as Erdogan’s Turkey, Netanyahu’s Israel and Palestine, whether Hamas-controlled Gaza or the West Bank. His long experience of covering events in the region make this an extraordinarily powerful account of one of the world''s greatest problems.

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Written with modesty, grace and compassion, his account of 30 years working in the Middle East for the BBC combines his own personal experience with and a rare understanding of what makes this tortured region so dangerously combustible . . . The result is an illuminating and riveting read.
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Arresting . . . excellent, doom-freighted.
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Bears witness to how lofty dreams of the post-Cold War period crashed and burned . . . with deep empathy and understanding of the roots of the conflict.
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[A] compelling blend of sweeping history and vivid memoir . . . Bowen paints in the historical background masterfully and manages to convey the pressure, euphoria and horror of war reporting as well.
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A gripping and compelling account that swings between gut-wrenching eyewitness stories and dispassionate analysis, laying bare the hopes and horrors of the Middle East in the twenty-first century. A remarkable book.
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This book is a very personal and erudite history of a troubled region where enemies of impartiality abound, though some don’t even live there. I highly recommend this fascinating book which is also a testament to a better era in journalism.
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This is a wise, compelling, fast-paced book – essential reading if you wish to make sense of the forces that have convulsed the Middle East, as well as unsettling all our lives, since the end of the Cold War.
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Few people are as well placed to authoritatively depict the making of the modern Middle East than Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s long-serving correspondent in the region . . . excellent.
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Jeremy Bowen is a master of succinct writing for television and in print, and his skill is showcased to brilliant effect in this distillation of decades of experience reporting from the Middle East. It’s a terrific book, pithy and pacy, equally at home telling stories of ordinary people as in encounters with princes and presidents.