Jeffrey G. Karam, ed., The Middle East in 1958: Reimagining A Revolutionary Year (New Texts Out Now)

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Jeffrey G. Karam (ed.), The Middle East in 1958: Reimagining A Revolutionary Year (London, UK: Bloomsbury and I.B. Tauris, 2020).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you edit (and contribute to) this book?

Jeffrey G. Karam (JK): My plan for this edited book was the result of three factors. 

The first factor relates to the time I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation in different archival locations and libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom, and particularly during my research trips in the Middle East—including between Amman and Beirut. Consequently, I contacted different political scientists and historians who shared a common appreciation for the complexities of the events in the year 1958. This common appreciation was evident in the published and forthcoming works of many scholars who have also contributed to this book. My point of departure and meetings with different scholars, both junior and senior, residing in and working at different institutions of higher education in various continents, focused on the need to examine a number of understudied cases, as well as explore and draw on records and sources that had not been fully analyzed in existing scholarship.