A History of the Arab Peoples

By: Albert Hourani

Narrated by: Nadia May

Despite the turmoil of Arab nationalism and fundamentalism, Middle Eastern wars, and oil crises, the history of the Arab world has been little known and poorly understood in the West. One reason may be that, for more than half a century, there has been no up-to-date single volume work that chronicles the story of Arab civilization - until now. Albert Hourani, distinguished historian and interpreter, has written a masterwork, a panoramic view encompassing twelve centuries of Arab history and culture. He looks at all sides of this rich and venerable civilization: the beauty of the Alhambra and the great mosques, the importance attached to education, the achievements of Arab science - but also internal conflicts, wide-spread poverty, the role of women, and the contemporary Palestinian question.(P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.

Not particularly linear

I would have retained more with a more linear narrative. This seems more suitable for reading than listening so it can be referenced and reviewed easily.

interesting and informative

Hourani is a great wrier and manages to convey enough information without being too indepth to be dull nor too broad to be pointless.
The narrator, Nadia May, speaks well but has the bad habit of using an "Arab" accent when she quotes historical people. It comes across poorly as these peoples lived across vast areas and times and would have sounded very different from eachother, and May's habit of homogenising them seens disrespectful.

A must read for anyone who is not familiar with Arab history!

4 stars only because the book was somewhat dry (history books tend to be that way), but the narration kept it lively for me and just because it was dry doesn’t mean I was completely uninterested. I honestly wanted to read this to gain a more well-rounded idea of the conflict between Israel and Palestine and I was not disappointed. A lot of things make more sense to me now.

A must

The book present a history of the Arabs between roughly the 7th century C.E. and the 1980s. To present in a single book a history of such a large geographical area, and on such a long period of time implies that the level of detail can be at best sketchy. This said, there is some degree of analysis, and the reader gains some insight into the subject. The reader is a native English speaker but is not a native speaker of Arabic so that she does her best to pronouce Arabic names. On the whole, the experience of listening to the audio was informative and a time well spent.

A People's History, not a State's

First off let me say that going into this book I did not have a really good understanding of Arab or Muslim culture. Now that I'm done I feel like I got a really good basis with which to understand these cultures.

This book doesn't explain in-depth the rise and fall of specific governments and nations, but rather details and profiles the peoples that populated them. It dives into the religious and social development in the Muslim countries. At this point I feel like I need to read a lot more books on more specific histories.

My only real critique of this book is that it's hard to keep all of the terminology straight in my head (Thank goodness for Wikipedia). It was really easy to zone out to this audiobook. The way it was written made it hard to pick back up and figure out what had been going on.

Probably the biggest plus of this book is that it doesn't feel like it's written from a western perspective. I would highly recommend this book as a good dive-in immersion experience.