Edward W. Said was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He was the author of more than twenty books, including Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism (both available in paperback from Vintage Books), and his essays and reviews appeared in newspapers and periodicals throughout the world. Said died in September 2003.


From the Hardcover edition. [Edit review] [Delete review]

Foreword by Tony Judt

PART ONE: The Second Intifada Begins, Clinton’s Failure

1 Palestinians Under Siege
2 The Tragedy Deepens
3 American Elections: System or Farce?
4 Trying Again and Again
5 Where Is Israel Going?
6 The Only Alternative
7 Freud, Zionism, and Vienna
8 Time to Turn to the Other Front
9 These Are the Realities
10 Thinking About Israel
11 Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma
12 Enemies of the State
13 Sharpening the Axe
14 The Price of Camp David
15 Occupation Is the Atrocity
16 Propaganda and War

PART TWO: September 11, the War on Terror, the West Bank and Gaza Reinvaded

17 Collective Passion
18 Backlash, Backtrack
19 Adrift in Similarity
20 A Vision to Lift the Spirit
21 Suicidal Ignorance
22 Israel’s Dead End
23 Emerging Alternatives in Palestine
24 The Screw Turns, Again
25 Thoughts About America
26 What Price Oslo?... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]

In his final book, completed just before his death, Edward W. Said offers impassioned pleas for the beleaguered Palestinian cause from one of its most eloquent spokesmen. These essays, which originally appeared in Cairo’s Al-Ahram Weekly, London’s Al-Hayat, and the London Review of Books, take us from the Oslo Accords through the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, and present information and perspectives too rarely visible in America.

Said is unyielding in his call for truth and justice. He insists on truth about Israel's role as occupier and its treatment of the Palestinians. He pleads for new avenues of communication between progressive elements in Israel and Palestine. And he is equally forceful in his condemnation of Arab failures and the need for real leadership in the Arab world. [Edit review] [Delete review]

“These searing essays refract the reality of terrible years through a mind with extraordinary understanding, compassion, insight, and deep knowledge.” —Noam Chomsky

“Probably the best-known intellectual in the world. . . . [In these essays] Said writes copiously and urgently about the alarming state of affairs in the Middle East.” —The Nation

“Said is a brilliant, complex man who confounds one’s expectations at every turn.” —Rocky Mountain News [Edit review] [Delete review]

Chapter One
Palestinians Under Siege

Since September 29, 2000, the day after Ariel Sharon, guarded by about a thousand Israeli police and/or soldiers, visited Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) in a gesture designed explicitly to assert his right as an Israeli to visit the Muslim holy place, a conflagration has erupted that continues as I write in mid-November. Sharon himself is unrepentant, blaming the Palestinian Authority for "deliberate incitement" against Israel "as a strong democracy" whose "Jewish and democratic character" the Palestinians wish to change. He says that he went there "to inspect and ascertain that freedom of worship and free access to the Temple Mount is granted to everyone," although he mentions neither the huge swarm of guards he took with him nor that the area was sealed off before, during, and after his visit, which scarcely assures freedom of access (Wall Street Journal, October... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]