Book Description Review A New York Times Editor’s Choice“[A] sweeping and authoritative history.” ―The New York Times Book Review“She serves up a wealth of human interest wrapped in ambiance and atmosphere. She paints riveting portraits of the protagonists… a superbly researched and subtly told story―current history at its best.” ―The Wall Street Journal“[A] wonderfully readable account… Ghattas has an enviable gift for going beyond politics… Whatever happens next in this long-running, oppressive and dangerous Middle Eastern drama, Black Wave will be a vivid, indispensable guide to the story so far.” ―The Guardian“A timely and welcome guide to the politics of a region…Well-researched and elegantly written.” ―The Financial Times“Unlike narratives told from a Western point of view, this book doesn’t highlight terrorism or ISIS but instead seamlessly weaves history and personal narrative into a story that explains the gradual suppression of intellectualism and the creep of authoritarianism in the region…Illuminating, conversational, rich in details and like nothing else you’ve ever read about the Middle East, Black Wave will leave you with a new understanding of this diverse and troubled region.” ―BookPage“The publication of this book, Black Wave, could not be better timed. In it, Kim Ghattas argues convincingly that the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979 was one of three events that year that profoundly shaped ― or rather misshaped ― the Middle East… a fascinating and winding but highly readable tale.” ―The Times (UK)“[An] illuminating account of the origins of sectarian violence and the current political shape of the Muslim world… [a] fluid, fast-moving narrative…Essential for all who follow world events.” ―Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*“Skillfully written and scrupulously researched, Black Wave is an essential book in understanding the origins of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.” ―Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower“The framing of Black Wave is as important as the content. Kim Ghattas portrays the last four decades across the Middle East as a dark age, a world dimmed behind a curtain of violence, misogyny, and religious extremism. In exploring how this blackness came to be, she recalls a brighter past and predicts a better future. It’s a powerful and important book.” ―Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America Foundation and former Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State “Kim Ghattas is a superb writer and reporter, which makes Black Wave an accessible and very interesting account of the sectarian schism and regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has riven the Middle East for decades and is one of the most consequential contests threatening global security.” ―Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt“An artful, gripping, timely, and humane account of the roots and consequences of the destructive rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia from one of the region’s most insightful and incisive observers.” ―Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Deputy Secretary of State“A well-researched and highly readable primer on the rivalry between Shias and Sunnis shaping today’s Middle East. Kim Ghattas masterfully traces the origins of sectarianism in the explosive rise of Islamic fundamentalism in 1979 and the destructive Saudi-Iranian rivalry that followed. Told through the experiences of those who lived and shaped sectarianism, Black Wave is both gripping and informative; a must read for anyone interested in understanding the forces shaping the Middle East today.” ―Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East politics at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and author of Shia Revival“Clear-eyed and honest, perfectly researched and brilliantly written, a unique book that is about more than the Saudi-Iran rivalry as it illuminates how and why the region began to turn inward over the last 100 years―a must read for outsiders and people in the region.” ―Marwan Muasher, Vice President for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former minister of foreign affairs of Jordan“Black Wave is a brilliant piece of work. Ghattas reveals how the competition between Tehran and Riyadh, instigated in 1979 by the Iranian revolution and the siege of Mecca―and intensified after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq―led to the instrumentalization of Islam to destroy cosmopolitanism, to force women to veil, and to mobilize sectarian extremists.” ―Emma Sky, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute and author of In a Time of Monsters Read more About the Author Kim Ghattas is an Emmy-award winning journalist and writer who covered the Middle East for twenty years for the BBC and the Financial Times. She has also reported on the U.S State Department and American politics, and is the author of The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She has been published in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Foreign Policy and is currently a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Born and raised in Lebanon, she now lives between Beirut and Washington D.C. Read more Customers Review: There are a handful of journalists at most of the old school today — deeply digging, meticulous research, driving down the middle towards facts — especially on the Middle East. Ghattas whose experience in the region and career around the globe, combined with this kind of journalism and superb writing, is a great rarity. Black Wave is a mind blow read, and the definitive start for any understanding of what is happening today, and a rich read to assess the context on the ground — as things are seen there. A must read.
Not since “The Great War for Civilization” have I read such a sweeping overview of recent Middle Eastern history and in many ways, this book is better (as well as more accessible). While Robert Fisk, the author of that book, mostly blamed the West for everything that had happened to the Middle East, Kim Ghattas mostly blames Iran, Saudi Arabia and their rivalry (even if this theory is somewhat undermined by the two countries’ détente during the 1990s and early 2000s). While that book was mostly a story about loss of life, this book is a story about loss of intellectual and social freedom.Iran and Saudi Arabia, since 1979, have both been out to prove that their models of Islam are the only valid ones. The Saudi government didn’t understand that this would lead its citizens and proxies to turn on its own American protector, but far from cutting them loose, the Americans for their part have mostly blamed Iran (or minor players such as Saddam Hussein) and bucked up the pro-Saudi dictatorships holding power throughout most of the Sunni Muslim world. (I didn’t say Ghattas takes us off the hook entirely.) These dictatorships turned to Islam as a source of legitimacy and increasingly cracked down not only on Western imports but their own cultural legacy of a more cosmopolitan Islam. Iran was doing the same thing as Saudi Arabia (on a smaller scale due to having less disposable income). Dissenters in both Iran and Saudi Arabia remember being told as children that if they enjoyed music, molten iron would be poured into their ears on Judgment Day.Ghattas’ book is also superior to Fisk’s in that the story of the devolution of Iran, Saudi Arabia and various other countries in the region is told not through her own eyes but through the eyes of a panoply of freethinkers both male and female with whom she has cultivated relationships. She tells the stories of their evolution and martyrdom or escape to the West.Only one of the people who escaped to the West eventually returned to live in the region, which is why unlike Ghattas, I am inclined to despair for the Middle East. I don’t see how these countries can come back from the black hole into which the wave has swept them, especially given that people who want more freedom than currently on offer can simply move to the West. That pressure will prove irresistible to most, but perhaps there are exceptions. The young Saudi studying IT who lived in my boardinghouse might be one. I encouraged him to stay, but he went home to Saudi Arabia. If there is hope, it will be built upon by his generation. Five stars for the book.
Kim Ghattas offers a study of the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia since the revolutions of 1979.For most Americans, we are familiar with the Iranian revolution of ’79 but know less about the changesin Saudi Arabia and the Wahabi, which she describes as puritan, in order to provide an metaphor fromAmerican history.Ghattas begins with her own Lebanon. Despite being our focus as Americans since 2001, the MiddleEast is confusing, so each chapter makes clear what country we are discussing and what year or yearsthe events took place. She then goes into Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Palestineand Israel and of course the United States. But the organizing principle for interpretation is therivalry between the Sunni and Shia represented by Iran (Persia) and the Saudis. When the Obamaadministration made the nuclear deal with Iran, it was shifting American policy from favoringthe Sunni toward the Shia side. This may have been influenced by Zbig Brzezinski’s ideas aboutthe balance of power in books such as the Grand Chessboard (my guess, that has nothing todo with the book). The Trump administration has moved back toward the alliance with the Saudiand Sunni side of the dispute. Ghattas says that both Iran and Saudi Arabia feared ISIS, but theyhated each other more.Ghattas provides helpful metaphors and analogies from American culture to deal with all these names.For instance, the Wahabi is puritanical where the Ayatollah was radical and revolutionary, even thoughthe practices may look similar, because their relationship to previous history was different. She’ll saythat so and so is the “Audrey Hepburn” of the country she’s discussing. There are also musical referenceslike Joan Baez and Led Zeppelin to show the interaction of cultures. Her perspective is basically liberaland feminist but not from a Western standard, we’re talking about issues like “driving a car” which becamea big thing with the Saudis. Although I didn’t see his name, there’s a lot of the radical scholar Edward Saidand the theory of Orientalism. But the specific project of the book is to answer Bernard Lewis’ questionof “What Went Wrong” in the last 41 years.Among the major events are the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War of 1990-91, 9/11 and bin Laden/al Qaeda,and the wars in Syria. There’s not a lot about Christians, although there were some mentions of theirdifficulties. From her Lebanese perspective, Ghattas says that the colonials gave power to the Christians,so the anti-Christian violence is partly anti-Western or anti-European. The concluding major eventwas the assassination of Jamal Kashoggi and the new crown prince MBS, who has claimed to bemodernizing but is a disturbing authoritarian. There is a reference to the Saudis’ desire for Suleimanito surrender, but he has since been killed by America. So while the book finished just a few months ago,the story keeps changing.
The reader should be told that from these enthusiastic and often learned reviews one cannot distinguish between Kim Ghattas and an excellent encyclopedia article. Not since Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August have I read a book which moved like a novel yet made so much clear. That’s the right book to compare Black Wave to. Ghattas’s book’s swiftness, its sense of the unstoppable, is not only an aesthetic pleasure. She gives the reader the sensation of the black wave inexorably sweeping forward, swallowing up first individuals, then entire countries. I don’t throw the word “great” around casually, but this is great historical writing.
If you want to understand the Middle East and all the conflict there and how The US keeps being drawn back in, I can’t think of a better place to start. This is very well written with big personalities and strange and violent happenings. There is no chance at all you’ll be bored. |
36 reviews