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American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. By Douglas Little. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xvi, 407 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-2737-1.)
Seldom has a book been more timely or essential than Douglas Little's essays on American policy in the Middle East. The attacks of September 11, 2001, emphasized the difficulty of understanding what the region means to the United States and what the United States means to the region. Little offers some refreshing clarity. He has combined broad reading and research with sober judgment to help readers understand the pattern of American Middle East policy. That policy, designed initially to contain the Soviet Union, has sought to assure the flow of oil to industrial nations and the survival of Israel but also to bring some measure of peace and stability to one of the world's most volatile areas.
Little makes a convincing case that prejudice and misperceptions...