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Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East | 
 enlarge | Authors: Karl E. Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.00
You Save: $11.95 (43%)
New (33) Used (7) from $16.00
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 2243
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.6
ISBN: 039306199X
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.04
EAN: 9780393061994
ASIN: 039306199X
Publication Date: June 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: History done through the influence of certain individuals.
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Product Description
A brilliant narrative history tracing today's troubles back to grandiose imperial overreach of Great Britain and the United States.
Kingmakers is the story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel's godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the territorial creator of Iraq); some controversial (the CIA's Miles Copeland and the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz). All helped enthrone rulers in a region whose very name is an Anglo-American invention. As a bonus, we meet the British Empire's power couple, Lord and Lady Lugard (Flora Shaw): she named Nigeria, he ruled it; she used the power of the Times of London to attempt a regime change in the gold-rich Transvaal. The narrative is character-driven, and the aim is to restore to life the colorful figures who for good or ill gave us the Middle East in which Americans are enmeshed today. 30 illustrations; 2 maps.
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| Customer Reviews:
Intrusion in the Holy Land June 10, 2008
George Feifer (Roxbury, Connecticut)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Although Meyer and Brysac don't tell why Americans learn so disastrously little from history, they've made some of the history itself wonderfully accessible. Now they do that for the modern history of the Middle East, whose "three universal faiths" extol "brotherhood and peace, compassion and humility" but whose "mortal disciples through the ages have engaged in reciprocal butchery. The very landscape of the Holy Land forms an outdoor museum of warfare." That's a sample of writing in this elegant, instructive book, the kind whose vividness thrusts readers through the otherwise baffling story of a region where the United States is again bogged down in confusion and loss, thanks to hubris grounded in ignorance.
What importance! How, forgive me, entertaining the authors make it! "Modern history" here means from roughly 1880, when the rapacious British invaded and occupied Egypt, largely to ensure control of the new Suez Canal. It ends with now, the last kingmaker - the predominantly greedy, short-sighted, full-of-themselves imperialists through whom Meyer and Brysac dramatically story-tell - being Paul Wolfowitz of very recent ill fame. I happened to have known two of the intruders: Kim Roosevelt and Miles Copeland, who bragged about their leading CIA roles in deposing Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran in 1953. Simplifying hard, the Land of the Free that has little compunction about using the dirtiest tricks while preaching democracy to the world has paid and will continue to pay hugely for that folly, whose current expressions draw heavily on the older ones.
However, Kingmakers doesn't simplify, nor pull punches either. Weary as everyone is of "this is a book every literate citizen should read," I find myself saying it to friends.
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