In the closing decades of the twentieth century, successive crises and cataclysmic events in the Middle East, though obviously not unique to this region, have been widely publicized by the American mass media. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the subsequent oil crisis, the civil war in Lebanon, the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 and the ensuing hostage crisis, the Iraq-Iran War of 1980–1988, the Intifadah in the West Bank and Gaza, the Gulf War, the continued bombing of Iraq, the Oslo Agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and the World Trade Center bombing have increased Americans' awareness of the Middle East but not necessarily their understanding of its culture and society. Unfortunately, the ways in which the media describe and interpret these events have created negative stereotypes about this region which are reinforced by movies such as The Siege. On the other hand, extensive research by anthropologists, historians, and...