This book highlights and examines the role of the textbook in legitimising established political and social orders. It analyses the way in which the ¿other¿ is presented in school textbooks, focusing on a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and argues that the role of textbooks in developing and maintaining a national identity should be afforded greater critical attention. Textbooks can help form national identities by developing a society¿s collective memory; this might involve a historical narrative which may be self-contradictory or even fabricated to a certain extent, including myths, symbols and collective memories that divide ¿us¿ from ¿them¿, and