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Mark LeVine is a "musician-activist-academic" troubadour, and his book reflects a genre of work that combines solid analysis with advocacy. He is a scholar but by no means detached. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, French, Italian, and German and has traveled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He is also a conceptual thinker who seems quite at ease with empirical and statistical materials. Moreover, he has met, conversed, and played with a significant number of cultural, political, and intellectual figures in the MENA region. Above all, he is both a promoter and critic of what he refers to as "the global peace and justice movement." He is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Thus, the book is a composite of LeVine's analytic perspective, personal experiences, and normative preferences; it is a panoramic exposition of culture, politics, and economics in the contemporary MENA. The stated purpose of the book is to show how neoliberal globalization contributes to the perpetuation of tyranny, violence, and corruption in the MENA, and he examines a cluster of tangible and intangible variables to make his case. He takes us so deep into the labyrinthine of globalization that the reader might have to struggle to remain focused on the message. He never fails, however, to show the relevance of his excursion trips in the journey and their connection to his main themes.
LeVine argues that "the peoples of the region have to fight two battles simultaneously:...