Jeremy Bowen

'An illuminating and riveting read.’ Jonathan Dimbleby Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present. In The Making of the Modern Middle East – in part based on his acclaimed podcast, ‘Our Man in the Middle East’ – Bowen takes us on a journey across the Middle East and through its history. He meets ordinary men and women on the front line, their leaders, whether brutal or benign, and he explores the power games that have so often wreaked devastation on civilian populations as those leaders, whatever their motives, jostle for political, religious and economic control. With his deep understanding of the political, cultural and religious differences between countries as diverse as Erdogan’s Turkey, Assad’s Syria and Netanyahu’s Israel and his long experience of covering events in the region, Bowen offers readers a gripping and invaluable guide to the modern Middle East, how it came to be and what its future might hold.

A Personal History

The Making of the Modern Middle East

Jeremy Bowen has been the BBC's Middle East correspondent for twelve years and has been on the ground for them as the recent revolutions have swept through the region. Realising this as a game-changing moment in the history of the Middle East, The Arab Uprisings captures the thoughts and feelings of the people involved as the events unfolded, putting these revolutions in their political context, and using them as a prism through which to understand the broader history and landscape of the Middle East. The book will look at the world the demonstrators rejected and its Arab dictators. The author will examine brutal police states, tribal loyalty and foreign help. The West's response and Israel's too, will form part of the narrative. This is an urgent and authoritative account of the seismic political changes rocking the Middle East, from one of the foremost reporters of our time.

the people want the fall of the regime

The Arab uprisings

War Stories Signed Edition

Having joined the BBC as a trainee in 1984, Jeremy Bowen first became a foreign correspondent four years later. He had witnessed violence already, both at home and abroad, but it wasn't until he covered his first war -- in El Salvador -- that he felt he had arrived. Armed with the fearlessness of youth he lived for the job, was in love with it, aware of the dangers but assuming the bullets and bombs were meant for others. In 2000, however, after eleven years in some of the world's most dangerous places, the bullets came too close for comfort, and a close friend was killed in Lebanon. This, and then the birth of his first child, began a process of reassessment that culminated in the end of the affair. Now, in his extraordinarily gripping and thought-provoking new book, he charts his progress from keen young novice whose first reaction to the sound of gunfire was to run towards it to the more circumspect veteran he is today. It will also discuss the changes that have taken place in the ways in which wars are reported over the course of his career, from the Gulf War to Bosnia, Afghanistan to Rwanda.

War Stories

An updated edition. Jeremy Bowen has been the BBC's Middle East correspondent for twelve years and has been on the ground for them as the recent revolutions have swept through the region. Realising this as a game-changing moment in the history of the Middle East, The Arab Uprisingscaptures the thoughts and feelings of the people involved as the events unfolded, putting these revolutions in their political context, and using them as a prism through which to understand the broader history and landscape of the Middle East. The book will look at the world the demonstrators rejected and its Arab dictators. The author will examine brutal police states, tribal loyalty and foreign help. The West's response and Israel's too, will form part of the narrative. This is an urgent and authoritative account of the seismic political changes rocking the Middle East, from one of the foremost reporters of our time.

The People Want the Fall of the Regime

The Arab Uprisings

The Six-Day War was an extraordinary human drama. It swept up a generation of Israelis and Arabs whose children still cannot live peacefully in the world the war created. Today, Israel is the superpower of the region. It has nuclear weapons but has never been able to digest the land it swallowed in 1967. However big its army, it will never be at peace or feel secure until the future of this land is settled. Thirty-six years after the end of the six days of fighting, after thousands more deaths and the failure of years of negotiation to try to reach a political settlement, Israelis and Palestinians are fighting once again on the streets in the West Bank and Gaza. It is still a low-level conflict, but if another full-blown Middle East war breaks out, its roots will lie in those six days in June 1967. Drawing on his experiences as the BBC's former Middle East correspondent, and building on extensive original research and interviews with some of the key participants, Jeremy Bowen uses his vast array of contacts to weave together a completely convincing and compelling account, hour by hour, of the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. As insightful as the best modern history writing and as gripping as fiction, this is a major debut by an author with superb media contacts.

Jeremy Bowen

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