Knopf
The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Published in September 2026
“The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”
—President John F. Kennedy, address at Rice University on the nation’s space effort, Sept. 12, 1962
The more I learn about the Middle East, the less I think I understand. It is not that I don’t have strong opinions about the Middle East. It is just that the more I read, the more doubt I have in the accuracy and completeness of my beliefs.
For anyone looking to challenge rather than affirm their ideas about the Middle East, I highly recommend The Cauldron. The masterful historian Simon Sebag Montefiore is somehow able to pack in roughly 125 years of history of the 19 countries of the Middle East (Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, UAE and Yemen) in a brisk 528 pages. (Or 20 hours and 10 minutes in audiobook format. I read going back and forth between my Kindle and Audible versions.)
The book, to my reading, is assiduously balanced. My hypothesis is that readers on the left and right in Middle Eastern politics will find equal numbers of ideas and arguments in The Cauldron to disagree with. Or perhaps it is my relatively shallow understanding of the region, despite decades of paying attention, that leads me to believe that the book carves out a comprehensive middle ground. Reading The Cauldron with an expert, such as a professor teaching a class in which the book is the central text, would greatly help illuminate and address preconceived notions and hidden biases. Sign me up!
While reading The Cauldron, two questions kept surfacing. First, I kept wondering how it could be that I know so little of the information the book covers, despite a lifetime of reading and thinking about the Middle East. The second question the book inspired is about the limits of reading for learning and the value-add of learning from teaching.
The Cauldron is really good at exposing knowledge gaps. Might a course, taught by a scholar of the Middle East and armed with some pedagogical expertise (or, even better, a partner learning designer), do better? I mean, no doubt a teacher and curriculum (I nominate The Cauldron) and the opportunity to engage in active learning around the lectures/discussions/readings would generate more learning. But how much more learning?
Do we know the learning delta between reading a book on your own and reading the same book as part of a well-taught course? That seems like a fundamental question for any educator to know, and I realize that I have no idea.
What I do know is that now that I’ve read The Cauldron, I’d be better prepared to take the most advantage of a course on the Middle East. The foundation of historical, political, military, economic and geographic knowledge that the book provides could be built upon.
Your campus may or may not be a place where discussions (or other things) are happening about the future of the Middle East and the role of the United States in the region. I wonder how informed those conversations are. Can we require a mandatory seminar on major issues where strong feelings run high? Probably not. Worth a try?
What are you reading?
