The Barry Rubin free books project

Barry Rubin is the learned historian and commentator on the Middle East who serves as director of Israel’s Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. In our Picks we frequently link to his online comments on current events posted online at The Rubin Report as well as PJ Media’s Rubin Report.

The GLORIA Center has now posted 13 of Rubin’s books on its site, free and full-text, to be read online or easily downloaded. The books are available in HTML and PDF on the free books home page. (Rubin says they will soon be available for download in other formats.) The project is designed to promote education on the Middle East American foreign policy, and other issues. Rubin says the hope is that readers will find the books “useful in your work, research, study, and analysis.”

The Truth About Syria, is one of Rubin’s most recent books. He comments on the book at the free books home page:

When I wrote The Truth About Syria, published by Palgrave-MacMillan in 2007 with a paperback in 2008, I tried to explain why the country was so pivotal in the Middle East and for U.S. interests. It was a case study of the old radical nationalist dictatorships, how they stayed in power, and why they were failing. The book also made the point, ignored by the Obama administration from the day it took office in 2009 to well after the civil war began there, that such a regime would not be moderated simply because militancy so well served its interest.

I described in great detail how the dictatorship worked there and why it was running into increasing trouble. Pointing out how the rulers were pushing revolutionary Islamism, despite the fact that they were secular and not even Muslims, I suggested that this may well prove to be a suicidal strategy.

Four years later, Syria blew up. The book is still a good guide to the regime there and the causes of the “Arab Spring” and rise of Sunni Arab Islamism to power.

Incidentally, an unauthorized edition was published in Arabic in Beirut and smuggled into Syria. It has been gratifying to hear from Lebanese moderates and Syrian oppositionist liberals how much they liked the book and how accurate they found it to be.

Readers might even be inspired to make a tax-deductible contribution (in the United States, UK, or Israel) to help support this project and other GLORIA activities, which can be done here.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses