Much has been written about the role and presence of the Arabs in the world at the beginning of this millennium, and their ability to meet the challenges overwhelming our planet, bristling as it is with science, technology and latest lethal weapons. Now this new book by Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber penetrates to the heart of the Arab situation by a new route, hitherto uncharted. The author gives us a practical and precise summary of his own contemporary Arab experience from an intercontinental perspective, notable for its success, variety and modernity. Sheikh Mohamed has been able to scale the peaks of international corporate and institutional life, and impose his presence and voice upon them. Here, in a distillation of wisdom drawn from a unique career, he presents us with a practical account of the lessons of his success, so that they can be applied to economic and social institutions and thence to society at large.

This book is a translation of the Arabic original, first published in 2009. It therefore pre-dates the events of the`Arab Spring' and other recent upheavals in the Arab world. Its insights are none-theless valid, and are just as applicable to the Arab world today as they were four years ago. Indeed, they have taken on extra urgency in the light of the author's prescient diagnosis of the Arab peoples' thirst for democracy, human rights and proper citizenship in their own countries.

SHEIKH MOHAMED BIN ISSA AL JABER was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1959, and is today a prominent international businessman and philanthropist. He is founder and chairman of the MBI Group, a worldwide investment institution operating in the hospitality, real estate, finance, oil and gas, and food industries, as well as the founder and sole patron of the MBI Al Jaber Foundation, a UK-registered charity focused on building bridges between the Middle East and the wider world.

Among many other roles he is Special Envoy of the Director General of UNESCO for tolerance, democracy and peace, official UN spokesman for good governance, founder of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

With a Foreword by Professor Michael Worton.