Book recommendations: The Middle East and how its modern state was shaped through colonialism

by DevilDonnie

Basically, good works on how and why the Middle East looks like it does today and how Western colonialism helped shape it

LinusEhle

"No god but god" by Reza Aslan is a book about Islam but it also has a chapter or two on western influence in the Middle East.

CptBuck

The AskHistorians book list is a decent place to start: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast

There are a few that are missing from that list that I think are pretty great and that I recommend here often for being well researched, succinct, and with detailed notes/bibliography to point you on to further topics:

D.K. Fieldhouse's Western Imperialism in the Middle East: 1914-1958 is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

Likewise for Eugene Rogan's The Arabs: A History which covers the last 500 years.

I also quite like Malcolm Yapp's The Near East Since the First World World War.