C. Rubin in this book shows the complete developmental process of the Palestinian Authority from a revolutionary movement to the executive branch of the government of a building state.Touches upon crucial points such as the Palestinial Legislative Council,the early institutions of the territory,the PA's relations with it's citizens and especially with the fundamendalist groups etc. I think it's a great book that anyone who wishes to study about Palestine and it's late political developments should read.Of course it requires a background in the area but it is very easily read at the same time.

The book is simply a collection of documents on the Arab-Israeli conflict, dating back to the British Mandate in Palestine. The editors included all the important papers such as the Balflour Declaration, the "White Paper," various UN declarations, and speeches made by both Arab and Israeli leaders. The latest documents it contains are those covering the Camp David meetings between President Clinton, barak, and Arafat near the end of Clinton's presidency. While it is not a history of the conflict (merely a collection of historical documents), it certainly can provide you with plenty of info on the subject.

Anyone who wants a truly honest vision of the Arab-Israeli conflict should consider this excellent 580-page Reader, last updated in 2001. It is divided into four sections each of which contains important writings from both sides (sometimes three or more) of the question and goes back more than a century.

The first, for example, runs from 1882 through the end of the British Mandate and includes 69 pages of writings, from the Bilu Group Manifesto, excerpts of Theodore Herzl's Jewish State and a 1905 French journal piece by Negib Azouri to the 1915 letter of Sir Henry McMahon to Hussein the Sherif of Mecca, the Peel Commission report, the US Special Committee on Palestine and the Partition Plan of the UN General Assembly.

The Third section runs from the Camp David Accords to Madrid, including statements from various commissions, the Arab League Jordanian Crown Prince Al-Hassan Bin Talal, and Lebanon and Israel's 1983 truce agreement. Also included is the Hamas charter, the Palestine National Council political resolution and declaration of independence of 1988 and Iraqi speech of Saddam Hussein as well as a 1991 U.S. letter of assurance to the Palestinians.

The Israel-Arab Reader's last section includes many Arab documents on Oslo and runs through 2001 statements by the Palestinian negotiating team and former President Bill Clinton.

It is hard to argue against reading important original documents, and forming your own opinion. Once you do, you will see many of the factors that have shaped the current Middle East as well as international and U.S. policy. Alyssa A. Lappen

From the Manifesto of the Bilu (1882) and Theodore Herzl's "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State) published in 1896, to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yassir Arafat speeches accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1994, this book contains an unique collection of documents that will provide the reader with a better understanding of the Middle East and the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. This last, and fifth, edition, published in 1995 adds new documents covering the most significant events of the 1990-1994 period, including the famous Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles signed in the White House in September of 1993, and although the reader will not find in this edition, any document of later events, this book, already a classic, maintains its place as a documentary history of the Arab-Israeli conflict that is indispensable to understand current Middle East affairs. As they have done with previous editions, historians and Middle East specialist Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin present a selection of key documents that reflect the viewpoints of all involved parties in this dramatic history. A great reference book.

I quite enjoyed Ellery Queen's remarkable 1932 story, The Greek Coffin Mystery. Noticing a book with a similar title, I next read Eric Ambler's, A Coffin for Dimitrios, a classic spy novel involving intrigue in Istanbul shortly before the start of WWII. A few days later I stumbled across a 1952 movie (Five Fingers) about actual espionage in Istanbul in late 1943. Subsequently, I found a detailed account of this particular espionage case in Barry Rubin's Istanbul Intrigues, a fascinating account of "espionage, sabotage, and diplomatic treachery in Istanbul, the spy capital of WWII".

In retrospect, my rather circuitous route from an Ellery Queen mystery to a well-researched military history seems fitting, as Rubin's description of WWII Istanbul was absolutely Byzantine. Seventeen intelligence organizations competed for critical information. Double agents, triple agents, and even quadruple agents were the norm. The Turks were rightly concerned with a possible German attack (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece were already occupied), but they feared Russia even more. They considered the United States as foolishly naïve in its belief that Stalin would not continue to occupy Eastern Europe and the Balkans after Germany's defeat. And they did not entirely trust the British either.

The Turkish intelligence organization, the Emniyet, was remarkably effective and somehow managed to keep track of the convoluted intelligence operations practiced by the Germans, the Russians, the British, the Americans, and the lesser powers.

I was sometimes overwhelmed by the detail in Rubin's account and I occasionally found myself skimming some sections. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend reading Istanbul Intrigues. Not only is this good history and good melodrama, it has immediate relevance to current events in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East and the Balkans.

We encounter a suicide attack on Franz von Papen, the opportunistic and devious German ambassador. We meet Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Vatican's legate and apostolic vicar to Istanbul's few Catholics. He was in disfavor with the church hierarchy for speeches critical of Benito Mussolini. Later Roncalli becomes the ecumenical Pope John XXIII. Contrastingly, we become acquainted with disreputable characters like Andre Gyorgy who combined lucrative smuggling with espionage services for the Hungarians, British, American OSS, Zionists, and unknown to these four groups, he also worked for the Germans.

If you read only one chapter, you might try The Valet Did It (chapter 15), the story behind the English film, Five Fingers. Released in 1952, the movie, a purported true account, was based on a 1950 book by Ludwig Moyzisch, the SD's Ankara chief. (The SD was the intelligence arm of the Reich Security Ministry, one of the three competing German intelligence operations in Turkey.) Barry Rubin's research illustrates that the full story was far more complex than Moyzisch himself realized, and has more twists than most contemporary spy novels.

Although well-researched and apparently quite accurate, footnotes are not available. However, Rubin did provide some appendices that can be quite helpful: Selective List of Code Names for OSS-Turkey, List of Intelligence Organizations operating in Turkey, List of Individuals Interviewed, an extensive Bibliography, and a good Index.

Istanbul Intrigues was originally published by McGraw-Hill in 1989, reprinted in 1992 by Pharos books, and recently (2002) has been republished by Bosphorus University Press. New and used copies are available via the Internet.

Barry Rubin is a recognized expert on Middle East affairs. He has published 16 books, edited another 17, and is the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His works include the widely acclaimed The Transformation of Palestinian Politics (Harvard, 1999) and The Israel-Arab Reader (Penguin/Putnam, 2002). He has taught at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Georgetown University, the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is currently teaching at Hebrew University's Harry Truman Center. He contributes articles to the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal.

The American and European scholarly contribution to understanding the Kuwait War tended to be limited to military analysis, polemical arguments, and abstract interpretations; and these have mostly petered out as interest in the war has declined. Accordingly, the important task of interpreting that conflict has been left largely to Israelis, who done an outstanding job fulfilling it. In the present study, a mostly Israeli cast of authors looks at the Iraqi decision to go to war, and the consequences of that decision. Baram draws on his unique knowledge of Iraqi politics to take on that most difficult of tasks, probing Saddam Husayn's mind. Mark A. Heller explains why the Iraqi army regularly performs poorly. Ofra Bengio looks at the balance of power within Iraq's ethnic communities. Patrick Clawson points out the subtle economic impact of the sanctions against Iraq while Robert J. Lieber argues that Saddam Husayn's adventurism could easily have deeply harmed the world economy. A host of authors-including Rubin, Shaul Bakhash, Joseph Nevo, David Kushner, and the late Avner Yaniv-then look at Iraq's foreign relations through the 1990-91 crisis and war. But perhaps most interesting is the chapter by Joseph Kostiner on the much-neglected Kuwaiti angle. He establishes the basic precepts of that country's foreign policy-essentially neutralism and good Arab citizenship-and then shows how these guidelines were maintained throughout the crisis leading up to 2 August 1990. He finds the thesis that Kuwaitis provoked Iraq to war not convincing.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1994