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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... Bliss. *After the hardcover version of this book appeared, this author visited Cambodia and experienced exactly what Bill and Janet Stoltzfus herein describe. Despite all the reading I did concerning the Cambodian holocaust of the 1970s ...
... Bliss. *After the hardcover version of this book appeared, this author visited Cambodia and experienced exactly what Bill and Janet Stoltzfus herein describe. Despite all the reading I did concerning the Cambodian holocaust of the 1970s ...
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... Bliss—a Congregationalist whose family had come over from England a few years after the Pilgrims did, who grew up in a lonely farmhouse in Vermont's Champlain Valley in much the same way that Abraham Lincoln had grown up a few years ...
... Bliss—a Congregationalist whose family had come over from England a few years after the Pilgrims did, who grew up in a lonely farmhouse in Vermont's Champlain Valley in much the same way that Abraham Lincoln had grown up a few years ...
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... Bliss would gravitate toward mission work abroad. Bliss stood out at Amherst as he did at Kingsville. In a commencement address he called for permanent “agitation” in religion and politics, since there would be “no finality this side of ...
... Bliss would gravitate toward mission work abroad. Bliss stood out at Amherst as he did at Kingsville. In a commencement address he called for permanent “agitation” in religion and politics, since there would be “no finality this side of ...
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... Bliss immediately recognized as the very incarnations of a calcified religious and social order. Not only did the Greek Orthodox monks dissuade the local children from attending Bliss's mission school, but they soon managed to close it ...
... Bliss immediately recognized as the very incarnations of a calcified religious and social order. Not only did the Greek Orthodox monks dissuade the local children from attending Bliss's mission school, but they soon managed to close it ...
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... Bliss, did not succumb to the temptation to compete with the Jesuits by offering English at the American schools. The New England missionaries were willing to sacrifice what little clout they had in Syria for the sake of influencing the ...
... Bliss, did not succumb to the temptation to compete with the Jesuits by offering English at the American schools. The New England missionaries were willing to sacrifice what little clout they had in Syria for the sake of influencing the ...
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