A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East |
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A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
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by David Fromkin
Sales Rank: 5374
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List Price: $20.00
$13.60
At Amazon
on 8-4-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 636 pages
Published by: Holt Paperbacks September 1, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0805068848
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0805068849
Book Dimensions:
8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Jack Miles, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Wonderful . . . No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East."
Product Review
"WonderfulNo book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East."—Jack Miles, Los Angeles Book Review
"Extraordinarily ambitious, provocative and vividly writtenFromkin unfolds a gripping tale of diplomatic double-dealing, military incompetence and political upheaval."—Reid Beddow, Washington Post Book World
"Ambitious and splendidAn epic tale of ruin and disillusionof great men, their large deeds and even greater follies."—Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal
"[It] achieves an ideal of historical writing: its absorbing narrative not only recounts past events but offers a useful way to think about them.The book demands close attention and repays it. Much of the information here was not available until recent decades, and almost every page brings us news about a past that troubles the present."—Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker
"One of the first books to take an effective panoramic view of what was happening, not only in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and the Arab regions of Asia but also in Afghanistan and central Asia.Readers will come away from A Peace to End All Peace not only enlightened but challenged ? challenged in a way that is brought home by the irony of the title."—The New York Times Book Review
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Paperback)
This book is of critical importance to any student of Middle East history. Fromkin recounts a great deal that he might have left out of a less complete survey. Its inclusion is but one thing that makes this work priceless. What emerges, before one is even halfway through, is a sweeping portrait of the many tragedies that seeded conflicts still plaguing the Middle East today. One major culprit can only be described as legendary British stumbling throughout World War I. At the core of Britain's Middle Eastern advisers was a group of bigoted, bumbling idiots, who could not see past the end of their noses. Sir Mark Sykes, for example, described many groups whose destiny he influenced with disgusting pejorative. Town Arabs, he described as "cowardly," "insolent yet dispicable [sic]" and "vicious as far as their feeble bodies will admit." Bedouin Arabs he called "rapacious, greedy...animals." Sykes was also obsessed with fear of Jews, Fromkin writes, "whose web of dangerous international intrigue he discerned in many an obscure corner." Not the least of these was the sadly mistaken view that the Young Turks party were governed by Jews, when in fact none were privy to their inner circle. This pathetic distortion of reality was informed by oriental affairs interpreter Gerald FitzMaurice, and shared by Gilbert Clayton, an adviser to Lord Kitchener. Like too many other British misconceptions about the Middle East, it was never investigated or much less corrected. Disasters resulting from the "Cairo group's" ill-informed advice abounded. Take the bungled attack on Gallipoli--caused horrific 500,000 combined casualties, which could have been sharply reduced, if not eliminated, had the allies acted swiftly. Another was the reliance on the "diplomacy" of an Arab imposter, Lt. Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi, who pretended to represent the Emir Hussein, Sharif of Mecca, but whom neither Hussein nor his son Feisel had ever met, much less entrusted with diplomatic powers. But there is plenty of blame to go around. Fromkin also plumbs the weakenesses of the Ottoman lords themselves, as well as those of duplicitous Arab leaders. Emir Hussein's actual emisaries neglected to inform the British that he did not know al-Faruqi--perhaps because he advanced an agenda which suited Hussein in many respects. But it caused problems. Worse, Arabs often negotiated in bad faith, knowing that they could deliver on few if any of the promises they made in pursuit of their goals. David Fromkin's intense scholarship is informed with the grace of a classic novel. Had there ever been any doubt, he proves that fact is stranger than fiction--and often a great deal more tragic. Alyssa A. Lappen
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A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
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Price: $13.60
Updated on 8-4-2008.
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