Arabists: The Romance of an American EliteSimon and Schuster, 1995 M07 1 - 368 pages A tight-knit group closely linked by intermarriage as well as class and old school ties, the “Arabists” were men and women who spent much of their lives living and working in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, and teachers. As such, the Arabists exerted considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats within the State Department from the early nineteenth century to the present. But over time, as this work shows, the group increasingly lost touch with a rapidly changing American society, growing both more insular and headstrong and showing a marked tendency to assert the Arab point of view. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the 100-year history of the Arabist elite, demonstrating their profound influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East, and tracing their decline as an influx of ethnic and regional specialists has transformed the State Department and challenged the power of the old elite. |
From inside the book
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... Arabist, one of the most loaded words in America's political vocabulary. In the Middle Ages an Arabist was only a physician who had studied Arab medicine, then much more advanced than the kind practiced in Europe. In the late nineteenth ...
... Arabist, one of the most loaded words in America's political vocabulary. In the Middle Ages an Arabist was only a physician who had studied Arab medicine, then much more advanced than the kind practiced in Europe. In the late nineteenth ...
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... Arabists. In most cases, Arabists are not the handful of upperlevel State Department officials savaged by columnists. Nor, usually, are they the Middle East policy types who appear on talk shows. Arabists are men and women, like Bill ...
... Arabists. In most cases, Arabists are not the handful of upperlevel State Department officials savaged by columnists. Nor, usually, are they the Middle East policy types who appear on talk shows. Arabists are men and women, like Bill ...
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... Arabists I shoot back, 'Arabists are men and women who have mastered a difficult language and have spent years of their lives in a difficult foreign environment in service to the United States. I wish I were one of them. Unfortunately ...
... Arabists I shoot back, 'Arabists are men and women who have mastered a difficult language and have spent years of their lives in a difficult foreign environment in service to the United States. I wish I were one of them. Unfortunately ...
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... Arabist tradition. The real Iraqgate was never a banking scandal but an epic human story that parallels the history of the American Republic. Oddly, though, Americans know more about British imperialism than they know about what ...
... Arabist tradition. The real Iraqgate was never a banking scandal but an epic human story that parallels the history of the American Republic. Oddly, though, Americans know more about British imperialism than they know about what ...
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... Arabists, was a boy of six at the time.) Unlike Pliny Fisk, who quickly gave up on Arabic, Smith kept at it daily for three years, establishing the groundwork for his later scholarship, until he received word from the Mission Board to ...
... Arabists, was a boy of six at the time.) Unlike Pliny Fisk, who quickly gave up on Arabic, Smith kept at it daily for three years, establishing the groundwork for his later scholarship, until he received word from the Mission Board to ...
Contents
Aggrieved Area Experts | |
Mugged by Reality | |
Horan of Arabia | |
Indiana Jones | |
Debacle | |
The Icy Eyes That Had Contemplated Nineveh | |
Cowering in a Dark Alley | |
Hostages to Idealism | |
Reality | |
Mr Foreign Service | |
Old Hands | |
Never a Dull Moment | |
Redemption | |
A New Species? | |
Bibliography | |
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Akins American missionaries antiSemitism April Glaspie Arab country Arab nationalism Arab world ArabIsraeli Arabists Aviv Baghdad became Beirut Bill Stoltzfus Bliss British cables Cairo career Christian Cluverius colleagues College Congregationalist Coon Crane culture Custis Damascus David Department Department’s desert Doughty Eagleton Eastern Egypt Eli Smith expatriates Falashas Feisal Foreign Service French FSOs Glaspie’s going Hermann Eilts Hume Horan Iran Iraq Iraq’s Iraqi Islam Israel Israeli Jerry Weaver Jerusalem Jewish Jews Jidda Kelly Khartoum Killgore Kissinger Kissinger’s knew Kuwait language Lawrence Lawrence’s learn Arabic Lebanon lived Loy Henderson Maronites Mesopotamia Middle East military mission Moslem NEA assistant secretary never officer Operation Moses Palestine Palestinian Parker peace Philby political president Protestant Roy Atherton Sadat Saddam Saudi Arabia says Seelye’s Shiite Sisco SixDay Soviet Sterner Sudan Sudanese Syria Talcott Seelye U.S. ambassador U.S. diplomats U.S. embassy United University Veliotes Washington Western Wiley William Yemen