As someone with minimum background knowledge on Arab history, I found this survey incredibly accessible and informative. Rogan details the history of the Arabs from the Ottoman conquest in 1517 to 2016. For those interested in the age of the early caliphates, or the very recent ascendancy of Islamic political movements in the Arab world, this is not the book you're looking for. The main focus of the book is on the 19th and 20th centuries. Rogan's emphasis on the colonial and Cold War era is welcome given the current popularity of orientalist tropes about "the eternal character" of Arabs. If anything, Rogan demonstrates that throughout space and time, the Arab people have been engaged in a constant process of reinvention spurred by internal and external developments alike.

As this is a survey text Rogan necessarily glosses over much, and spends much of his narrative fixated on developments in Egypt and Occupied Palestine. For instance, Rogan's discussion of the North Yemen Civil War of 1962 to 1970 is limited to consideration of how Nasser's quixotic involvement in the conflict left him totally unprepared for the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Perhaps if he had written the book in 2022 rather than 2016, he would have given more weight to events in Yemen. This criticism aside, I believe that given the exigencies of space, his focus on Egypt (the abortive "Arab Prussia") and Palestine (an enduring catalyst for political action in the Arab world) is well founded.

Overall, I would highly recommend this study.