Product Description: The Other World combines a comparative and area studies approach to explore contemporary global issues in the non-Western world. Accessible and interdisciplinary, this text provides students with historical, political, economic, and cultural background as well as case studies on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Central Asia and the Southern Near Abroad. Describing similarities and differences among regions and focusing on key countries and problems, The Other World is a practical survey of the issues affecting the majority of the world's population and their local and global context.
Informative, easy to follow. This is, of course, a college text book. In spite of that, its actually a very interesting read. It does not follow the encyclopedic overview of third world nations, but instead it tells the story of the influences, social conditions, and people who constitute the third world. I like that the chapters are clear and concise to the stated subject. The book flows from one idea to the next, building your understanding of the subject as it describes the places and people who exemplify those ideas. The authors took a novel approach with the layout of a book of this type, but it works; it has managed to keep my attention for the last 7 weeks.
Middle East History is full of holes While overall this is a potentially useful book to the introduction of the "other" world for students, the sections on Israel and the Middle East make some big mistakes. This throws into question the overall usefulness of the whole book. Here are he problems as I see them:
1.The Palestineans are not the direct descendents of the Philistines.
2. The British Mandate of Palestine which happened after WWi (1918-1948) included what is now Jordan, Israel and Palestinean territories. The British in order to thank the Hussein clan for their support during WWi gave them TransJordan in 1922 (modern Jordan) which was carved out of the mandate that the League of Nations gave the British to control (Historic Palestine).
3. The Jews had always had a presence in Historic Palestine, not just a recent 20th century immigration.
4. After the establishment of Israel in 1948 many of the Arab countries forced their Jewish inhabitants to leave, and many went to Israel (approximately 800.000) and were absorbed. More were forced out after the 1967 Six-Day War (especially the Egyptian Jews) The Palestinians (also around 800,000) that choose or were forced to leave what became Israel were never absorbed into the Arab countries because this would have acknowledged the State of Israel.
This resource in just this one section has these claring problems and I am curious as to the whether the other sections were so poorly researched as well.
Incredible visual guide to the Forgotten Third World This book goes into a visual comparision of the powerful Western World and the rest of the World. It depicts through pictures and statistics the growing gap between the have and the have-nots. Very powerful yet still a coffee table book.
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