Books about Orientalism from Amazon.com

The noted critic and a Palestinian now teaching at Columbia University,examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs..
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This is the first systematic critique of Edward Said's influential work, Orientalism, a book that for almost three decades has received wide acclaim, voluminous commentary, and translation into more than fifteen languages. Said’s main thesis was that the Western image of the East was heavily biased by colonialist attitudes, racism, and more than two centuries of political exploitation. Although Said’s critique was controversial, the impact of his ideas has been a pervasive rethinking of Western perceptions of Eastern cultures, plus a tendency to view all scholarship in Oriental Studies as tainted by considerations of power and prejudice.

In this thorough reconsideration of Said’s famous work, Ibn Warraq argues that Said’s case against the West is seriously flawed. Warraq accuses Said of not only willfully misinterpreting the work of many scholars, but also of systematically misrepresenting Western civilization as a whole. With example after example, he shows that ever since the Greeks Western civilization has always had a strand in its very makeup that has accepted non-Westerners with open arms and has ever been open to foreign ideas. The author also criticizes Said for inadequate methodology, incoherent arguments, and a faulty historical understanding. He points out, not only Said’s tendentious interpretations, but historical howlers that would make a sophomore blush.

Warraq further looks at the destructive influence of Said's study on the history of Western painting, especially of the 19th century, and shows how, once again, the epigones of Said have succeeded in relegating thousands of first-class paintings to the lofts and storage rooms of major museums.

An extended appendix reconsiders the value of 18th- and 19th-century Orientalist scholars and artists, whose work fell into disrepute as a result of Said’s work..
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From the Great Pyramids to the Taj Mahal, the Middle East and India have for centuries lured Westerners to travel and have inspired their architecture, literature, music and fashion The Orientalists pursues the richest era of this fascination, the mid to late 19th century, when American and European artists traveled and painted throughout the Holy Land and India. The highly cinematic images they created suggest a great influence on modern visual culture. Travel, art, geography, cultural perception, and social and military history are all woven through the text. An extensive introduction provides a thought-provoking perspective on the evolution of Orientalism and the rise of Islam and its ever-changing relationship to the West. It is within this context that the author introduces us to Orientalist paintings. The author is well aware of September 11, 2001 and its implications on the book which was being researched and formulated in his mind before the horrific events unfolded. He does not pretend.
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In the years following World War II, American writers and artists produced a steady stream of popular stories about Americans living, working, and traveling in Asia and the Pacific. Meanwhile the U.S., competing with the Soviet Union for global power, extended its reach into Asia to an unprecedented degree. This book reveals that these trends--the proliferation of Orientalist culture and the expansion of U.S. power--were linked in complex and surprising ways. While most cultural historians of the Cold War have focused on the culture of containment, Christina Klein reads the postwar period as one of international economic and political integration--a distinct chapter in the process of U.S.-led globalization.
Through her analysis of a wide range of texts and cultural phenomena--including Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The King and I, James Michener's travel essays and novel Hawaii, and Eisenhower's People-to-People Program--Klein shows how U.S. policy makers, together with middlebrow artists, writers, and intellectuals, created a culture of global integration that represented the growth of U.S. power in Asia as the forging of emotionally satisfying bonds between Americans and Asians. Her book enlarges Edward Said's notion of Orientalism in order to bring to light a cultural narrative about both domestic and international integration that still resonates today..
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Nineteenth-century Europe was fascinated by the Orient. Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1798 initiated this phenomenon, and its history included the Greek uprising against the Turks in 1821 and the French taking of Algiers in 1830. Artists of the period, too, were captivated by these events, and the rich body of imagery they produced is the subject of this volume. Author Christine Peltre's elegant text retraces Orientalism's artistic history, in which the French and British schools predominated. The "high poetry" of the Romantics' Orient strove for dramatic effect, as the works of David Roberts, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Eugene Delacroix attest. A different brand of imagery was produced by the "ethnographic gaze" of the century's middle years, practiced by artists such as John Frederick Lewis, Eugene Fromentin, Jean-Leon Gerome, A. D. Ingres, and Adolphe Monticelli. Work of this kind was eventually superseded by a "third style", a fusion of European and Eastern elements, as seen in the work of August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse. Witnesses to a history that they influenced in subtle ways through their imagery, the Orientalist painters also produced a history of their own, that of a spiritual and formal quest to find in the "East" the ideal of "primitive" purity. Orientalism in Art covers all these facets, making it an indispensable volume for art historians and anyone with a passion for Orientalist art..
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With the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, America's relationship with the Middle East exploded to the forefront of our national consciousness. Looking back more than a half-century, Douglas Little offers valuable, historical context for anyone seeking a better understanding of this complicated relationship. He explores the encounters between the United States and the Middle East since 1945, focusing particularly on the complex, sometimes inconsistent attitudes and interests that have shaped U.S. relations in the region.

Little begins by exposing the persistence of "orientalist" stereotypes in American popular culture and then examines U.S. policy toward the Middle East from many angles. Chapters focus on America's increasing dependence on petroleum; U.S.-Israeli relations; the threat of communism; the rise of revolutionary nationalist movements in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Libya; the futility of U.S. military and covert intervention; and the unsuccessful attempt to broker a "peace-for-land" settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The overarching theme of the book is that a combination of American omnipotence and profound cultural misunderstanding ensured that the United States would encounter trouble in the Middle East after 1945 and that those forces continue to bedevil the relationship between these vastly different cultures to the present day..
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Alberto Pinto is among the most celebrated interior designers at work today. Here he turns his eye to the wonders of the East and a series of interiors inspired by the colors and textures of Morocco, Byzantium, India, and beyond.
Included in this book are interiors in Europe, North America, and North Africa belonging to the jet set and modern elite. Each interior celebrates opulence, whether with fine damasks and silks, intricate tilework, or glittering objets d'art. Included are other visual stage sets for living that are as breathtaking as they are original-vast terraces over sumptuous gardens, shimmering swimming pools open to the sea and sky, filtered light bouncing off floor-to-ceiling mirrors reflecting an infinity of precious woods in an exquisite parquet floor. Pinto designs spaces to delight the senses, and the publication of Orientalism will usher in a new era of sensuality in interior design.
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The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book "Orientalism". Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today.Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably fit his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology.He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound under appreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to duelling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame. Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies..
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