James L. Gelvin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of California, Los Angeles. A specialist in the modern social and cultural history of the Arab East, he is author of The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know (2017), The Modern Middle East: A History (2020), editor of The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval (2021), and co-editor of Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print, 1850-1930 (2013). His books have been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, Arabic, and Polish. In 2015, Gelvin received the Middle East Studies Association's Undergraduate Education Award.