MER Article Pitching the Princes Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Viking, 2009). Robert Vitalis • 8 min read
MER Article Thinner Than Air Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) Robert Vitalis • 6 min read
MER Article The Closing of the Arabian Frontier and the Future of Saudi-American Relations In 1893, the University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner traveled to the Chicago world’s fair to deliver the most famous paper in the annals of the US historical profession. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” turned “the fact of conquest” into the myth of pioneers settling Robert Vitalis • 20 min read
MER Article Gun Belt in the Beltway On August 22 and 23, 1993, Saudi Arabia’s finances received rare front-page coverage in the New York Times, inaugurating a period of hand wringing inside the Beltway and among the academy’s consulting class over the kingdom’s future. This is a tradition going back decades, to the 1940s, when the Sau Robert Vitalis • 3 min read
MER Article The Middle East on the Edge of the Pleasure Periphery Thomas Cook and Sons’ first tour excursions in 1841 mark the birth of a global industry, in a decade that also included the founding of the Cunard Lines and the Wells Fargo successor, American Express. Cook began to internationalize its operations in the 1860s, creating the first package tours for E Robert Vitalis • 14 min read
MER Article Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (Princeton, 1987). Robert Vitalis • 9 min read
MER Article Egypt's Infitah Bourgeoisie A recent story illustrates the political power of the bourgeoisie in contemporary Egypt: At the beginning of 1985, the Egyptian minister of economy, Mustafa al-Sa‘id, unveiled a set of new trade and banking laws. They aimed, among other things, at imposing a greater degree of Central Bank control ov Robert Vitalis • 5 min read
