Scholar Fouad Ajami published this survey of the political, cultural and religious issues that have permeated the Arab world in 1999. That means it's a look inside that world just on the cusp of 9/11 and the second American war against Iraq.

Ajami seeks to show how the Arab world, while interconnected, is much more segmented than the average Westerner might suppose. The generation of the title is that generation which came of age just after World War II. The central theme of the book is the aborted and probably doomed attempts by the intellectuals of that generation to create more modern, secularized societies. In his survey, Ajami focuses in turn on the downward spiral of violence that wracked Lebanon in the 70s and 80s, events in Egypt through the Nasser, Sadat and (the first two decades of) Mubarak eras, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and establishment of a Moslem state and the resistance among intellectuals throughout the Arab world to any compromise peace with Israel.

Fascinating stuff, and I learned a lot, especially as I was reading the section on Egypt as the Egyptian people were in the streets changing their political world. Also interesting is that in many cases, Ajami makes liberal use of the words and views of the various regions' most prominent poets in describing the views of those societies. ( )