With the publication of its twelfth volume, the Middle East Contemporary Survey adds up to far more than the sum of its parts. It offers the researcher an easily accessible record going back to 1976 of both great events (the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iraq-Iran war, the Lebanese imbroglio) and less-noted ones (Syrian domestic issues, Omani relations with Moscow). Fortunately too, the editors have included Turkey, a country that Americans too often see apart from the Middle East.
Two regular contributors, Eliyahu Kanovsky and Martin Kramer, deserve special note. Kanovsky, who has contributed a chapter on economics to all but two volumes, provides valuable reports of individual countries (the current volume covers Jordan's sinking economy). His most important work, however, concerns the oil market; because he almost alone factors the producers' needs into his analyses, he consistently draws more pessimistic conclusions about their position than most observers. This makes Kanovsky a maverick; it also makes him right more often than any other analyst. Kramer (who has contributed to every volume of the MECS since 1980) provides a unique window into the active world of Islamic conferences and diplomacy, as well as into the very important but otherwise unknown developments of the great Sunni-Shi'i divide. Among other subjects, his chapter in volume XII covers the pilgrimage controversy, the Muslim Brethren, and Islam in Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, and among the Palestinians.
