Changing Qatar: Culture, Citizenship, and Rapid Modernization

I was gifted this book from someone who knows that I’ve been there. Well-written, and deeply-researched, it illuminated - and validated - many of my own observations and experiences. On one hand, with more than 50 pages of bibliography and notes, this is clearly an academic book published by a prestigious university press. Yet it reads like Bruce Chatwin, or Paul Theroux, on the other. From the multiple vantage points of the comedy club and the basketball court, the international migrant labor camp and the high-rise luxury apartments that tower above it, to the souped-up Land Cruisers careening at top speed through the round-a-bouts of Doha to the luxury mega-malls, to a lush-green royal compound blooming deep in the desert, replete with golf carts, servants and swords, a zoo, and a full-service Starbucks, Changing Qatar peeks behind the veil of a country and culture that can seem as hidden to Western eyes as it’s people, even in the harsh desert daylight. An irreplaceable companion to anyone interested in Qatar or planning to visit.