text: i'm writing this before reading the whole book but its a collection of articles so the different chapters are discrete units under a common theme of the economies of the arab world with a good deal on the economies of their oil producing GCC members.
  
  reading this book more than twenty years after it was published is fascinating as so many of the issues and repercussions mentioned have either come true or held true and the state of the region has not improved considerably but even regressed in many cases.
  
  consider the following excerpt from the book that i found interesting:
  
  "the oil states today face tremendous challenges, as oil revenues start to decline. Few expected that the decline would come so soon. Everybody knew it would come, but it was expected later rather than sooner."
  
  this is almost like seeing history repeat itself in real time.
  
  worth a look if you're interested in the field
  