Imperfect Strangers

In Imperfect Strangers, Salim Yaqub argues that the 1970s were a pivotal decade for U.S.-Arab relations, whether at the upper levels of diplomacy, in street-level interactions, or in the realm of the imagination.

Salim Yaqub is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East.

A fresh perspective on U.S. policy in the Middle East.... Yaqub's nuanced knowledge of the region is impressive.

A highly innovative, important, and entertaining book, filled with details about not just top-level diplomacy, but Hollywood films, best-selling books, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and more. It is, or will soon be, required reading for any scholar of U.S. foreign relations in the 1970s, as well as the evolution of post-Second World War American Middle East policy.

Absolutely essential for understanding how the United States emerged as a multicultural Middle East hegemon.

Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin, author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam:

Imperfect Strangers is a first-rate, highly original, and unquestionably important book. Salim Yaqub brings together consideration of high-level policymaking with analysis of American domestic politics and culture and persuasively argues that the 1970s mark a major—and mostly ignored—turning point in U.S.–Middle Eastern relations.

Hugh Wilford, author of America's Great Game :

Elegantly traversing the realms of high diplomacy, social history, and cultural perception, Salim Yaqub draws on exhaustive research to build the bold but compelling argument that the 1970s was a transformative moment in U.S.-Middle East relations. Written with tremendous authority, humanity, and wit, Imperfect Strangers makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the fraught and complex encounter between Americans and the Arab world.

Douglas Little, Clark University, author of Us versus Them: The United States, Radical Islam, and the Rise of the Green Threat:

Salim Yaqub's Imperfect Strangers makes a compelling case that the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years marked a watershed in U.S. relations with the Arab world. During the 1970s, the United States emerged as the chief interlocutor in the Arab-Israeli peace process at precisely the moment when the Arab states were becoming more polarized than ever between moderates and radicals. Meanwhile, Arab Americans were becoming a force to be reckoned with inside the United States, not only as outspoken critics of America's special relationship with Israel but also as increasingly well-organized opponents of what today we would call Islamophobia. By the end of the decade, these trends produced a truly ironic situation: reciprocal hostility between the United States and the radical Arab states on one hand and greater acceptance of Arab Americans by the U.S. public and mainstream media on the other.

David Farber, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of History, University of Kansas, author of Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam:

Salim Yaqub has written a sophisticated overview of U.S.-Arab relations during that pivotal decade, the 1970s. Deftly, he examines both American foreign policy during that critical era and how Arab Americans responded to their government's shifting positions. Given current concerns about ISIS, international terrorism, the fraught politics of the Middle East, and the heated rhetoric and high stakes surrounding the status of people of Arab descent in the United States as well as in Europe, Yaqub’s rich and compelling work could not be more relevant.

Melani McAlister, author of Epic Encounters:

Imperfect Strangers is creatively conceived, impressively researched, and beautifully written—a full rethinking of the history of U.S. relations with the Arab world in a crucial decade. Salim Yaqub's attention to Arab Americans and their complicated political positioning is most welcome, a crucial corrective to scholarship that separates diplomatic history from the domestic politics of race. We need this kind of nuanced, innovative work if we are to understand the tangled history of the United States in the Middle East.