I have just finished reading Global Middle East Into The Twenty-First Century . Apart from a couple of essays which I have found dry, the collection of 24 short essays is really worth reading. It is accessible to both students and those who are eager to read about different topics related to the region in its global context, from music, food and Levantines in Latin America to oil, Egyptian cotton, Mo Salah and ports of the Persian Gulf...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51