Nathan J. Citino discusses his new book, Envisioning the Arab Future: Modernization in U.S.-Arab Relations, 1945–1967 (Cambridge, 2017). Drawing on extensive original research in Arabic and English, the book explores how Americans and Arabs—of all political stripes—disputed the meaning of modernization within a shared set of Cold War-era concepts. Faith in linear progress, the idea that society functioned as a “system,” and a fascination with speed united officials and intellectuals otherwise divided by language and politics. By uncovering a shared history of modernization between Arabs and Americans, Envisioning the Arab Future challenges assumptions about a “clash of civilizations” and profoundly reinterprets the antecedents of today’s crises. The event is sponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies and International History, the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy, and the Blum Center for Global Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development.

Nathan J. Citino is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, where he specializes in the history of U.S. foreign relations with a particular focus on U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He is the author of From Arab Nationalism to OPEC: Eisenhower, King Sa‘ud, and the Making of US - Saudi Relations (Indiana, 2002) and Envisioning the Arab Future: Modernization in U.S.-Arab Relations, 1945–1967 (Cambridge, 2017).