The Arab Mind

From Wikipedia;

The Arab Mind is a non-fiction cultural psychology book by Raphael Patai, who also wrote The Jewish Mind. It was first published in 1973, and later revised in 1983. An update (Patai has since died) is planned for 2007.

The book advocates a tribal group survival explanation for the driving factors behind Arab culture.

Criticism
According to Emram Qureshi, the book's methodology is "based on a fatally flawed set of assumptions -- most importantly, that there is one entirely homogenous Arab culture, derived from nomadic Bedouin culture. This ignores both the diversity and history of a people and civilization that extends across dozens of countries, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and the deeply rooted Arab culture of cities and agricultural communities."[1]

In his view the book is "emblematic of a bygone era of scholarship focused on the notion of a 'national character,' or personality archetype". According to Qureshi, Sondra Hale, a professor of anthropology and chair of the women's studies program at UCLA, sent him an e-mail in which she stated it can "no longer be taken seriously".

Patai is criticized in passing at several points in Edward Said's book Orientalism. Philip S. Golub calls it “a compendium of racist stereotypes and Eurocentric generalizations” which “has become the bible of the Bush administration’s leading neoconservative lights and ‘the most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the U.S. military.’” The book is described as simplistic, reductionist, stereotyping, generic, essentialist, outdated, superseded, flawed, unscientific and even intellectually dishonest by other scholars.