Black Wave, by Kim Ghattas

Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)

Examines how the Saudi-Iranian rivalry after the Iranian Revolution has shaped the region and the world at large. Treats the peoples and actors in the region with real agency, not as mere pawns in a geopolitical game of chess. It goes into the regional detail and complexity that my book could not.

Read it asking: How much of the region's last forty years is explained by great-power competition, and how much by a rivalry that had its own logic entirely?