I've heard the following books recommended as good starting points for understanding the history and context of the Middle East by a scholar who recently visited the Mount Allison campus (I forget his name!) and by Edward Said (in a Harper's review last summer). In other words, consider these before picking up anything by Bernard Lewis:

Colonising Egypt, by Timothy Mitchell

The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam, by Robert Malley

The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, by Marshall Hodgson

Islam and Modernities, by Aziz Al-Azmeh

Classical Arab Islam: The Culture and Heritage of the Golden Age, by Tarif Khalidi

And Ken Wiwa (one of a very small number of decent Globe and Mail columnists and son of Ken Saro Wiwa, the Nigerian activist murdered by the Nigerian government at the behest of Shell) mentioned this book when he gave a talk here the other night:

The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization by Josh Karliner

And right now, I'm reading:

People before Profit: Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis, by Charles Derber

Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Steps to and Ecology of Mind, by Gregory Bateson

Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology, by Darin Barney

Phenomenology of Spirit, by G W F Hegel

Foucault, by Gilles Deleuze

The SCUM Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas

Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen

And here's a review of Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree, just for fun.