pbThe little-known history of public school teachers across the Arab world--and how they wielded an unlikely influence over the modern Middle Eastb pToday, it is hard to imagine a time and place when public school teachers were considered among the elite strata of society. But in the lands controlled by the Ottomans, and then by the British in the early and mid-twentieth century, teachers were key players in government and leading formulators of ideologies. Drawing on archival research and oral histories, iTeachers as State-Buildersi brings to light educators' outsized role in shaping the politics of the modern Middle East. pHilary Falb Kalisman tells the story of the few young Arab men--and fewer young Arab women--who were lucky enough to teach public school in the territories that became Iraq, Jordan, and PalestineIsrael. Crossing Ottoman provincial and, later, Mandate and national borders for work and study, these educators were advantageously positioned to assume mid- and even high