The Middle East is subject to perpetual mediation by those who seek to explain, clarify, or obscure it to the West. Some come from the region, some from the West. Their motives are mixed, but their mediation is often driven by a personal pursuit of meaning. Some examples:

• The Arab Nation of Shakib Arslan gives an account of Europe’s leading pan-Islamic activist between the world wars.
• Ambition, Arabism, and George Antonius explores the irreconcilable allegiances that derailed the author of The Arab Awakening in his last years.
• The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss) follows the strange career of the Austrian Jew whose Road to Mecca is the most famous account of conversion to Islam.
• Prisoner of Hate: Jean Genet and Palestine asks why the iconoclastic French playwright became enamored of Palestinian violence.