Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power. According to Said, in the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab elites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized a romanticized version of Arab Culture created by French, British and later, American, Orientalists. Examples used in the book include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into one narrative of an incident and adventure in an exotic land. Through the critical application of post-structuralism in its scholarship, Orientalism influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle Eastern studies, especially with regard to how academics practice their intellectual inquiries when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. Moreover, the scope of Said's scholarship established Orientalism as a foundational text in the field of postcolonial studies, by denoting and examining the connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a given country's post-colonial period. As a public intellectual, Edward Said debated historians and scholars of area studies, notably, historian Bernard Lewis, who described the thesis of Orientalism as "anti-Western." For subsequent editions of Orientalism, Said wrote an Afterword (1995) and a Preface (2003) addressing discussions of the book as cultural criticism. Overview "Orientalism" The term orientalism denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the "Oriental world". This intellectual tradition is the background for Said's presentation of Orientalism as a European viewpoint reflecting a contrived Manichean duality. As such, Orientalism is the pivotal source of the inaccurate cultural representations that form the foundations of Western thought and perception of the Eastern world, specifically in relation to the Middle East region. Said distinguishes between at least three separate but interrelated meanings of the term: an academic tradition or field; a worldview, representation, and "style of thought based upon