Hammond, Andrew 1970–

views updated

Hammond, Andrew 1970–

Personal

Born March 13, 1970, in Dundee, Scotland; son of Leonard (a shop owner and manager) and Isabel Anne (a secretary) Hammond; married Rola Mahmoud Abou-Hashish (an actress and singer), 1980. Education: London University, B.A. (history and Arabic).

Addresses

Home—Cairo, Egypt. Office—Reuters Saudia Ltd., Box 62422, Riyadh 11585, Saudi Arabia. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Journalist. Middle East Times, Egypt, former editor; Reuters (multimedia news agency), senior correspondent in Saudi Arabian bureau. Cairo Times (weekly magazine), Cairo, Egypt, cofounder with Hesham Qasem.

Writings

Pop Culture Arab World!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, ABC-Clio (Santa Barbara, CA), 2005.

What the Arabs Think of America, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2007.

Sidelights

As senior editor of the Saudi Arabian bureau of Reuters news agency and a resident of the Middle East since his graduation from London University in the mid-1990s, journalist Andrew Hammond is an expert on Middle-Eastern culture. In his book Pop Culture Arab World!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Hammond shares his wide-ranging insights with American readers. In addition to media, theatre, sports, language, religion, and film, Hammond also discusses such uniquely Arabian things as belly dancing and the musical genre known as Arab-pop. According to Library Journal contributor Stanley P. Hodge, Hammond "blends a serious journalistic style with an academician's affinity for documenting sources in this timely work," which is part of ABC-Clio's "Popular Culture in the Contemporary World" nonfiction series. Valuable because of Hammond's inclusion of an index of Arabic terms and names as well as a list of useful print and Web resources, the work also discusses the cultural shifts underlying the region's pop culture, such as the role of women, the rise of radical Islam, and the influence of Western consumer culture. Hodge went on to cite the work as "a much-needed and timely statement" on the current state of the region, and School Library Journal reviewer Diane S. Marton dubbed Pop Culture Arab World! an "authoritative" book that is both "fascinating and unbiased" in its approach.

Discussing his motive for writing Pop Culture Arab World! with Asharq Alawsat online interviewer Najah al Osaymi, Hammond noted: "I wanted to emphasize the bright and distinguished elements in Arab culture, based on my experience, readings, and my journalistic work in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, Al Sham and the Gulf region." Hammond explained that, in the book, he concentrates his focus on "similarities in the Arab identity" as they exist in the region's music and visual arts because, as he told al Osaymi, "the Arab world is full of charms that many in the western world do not comprehend."