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Title: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin ISBN: 0805068848 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4
Rating: 5
Summary: Let's start at the beginning...
Comment: This book is a fascinating journey into roots of the current problems in the middle east. "A Peace to End All Peace" reads like a fiction novel and is very concise. Fromkin helps to explain in detail the great maneuvering and the politics that resulted in the downfall of the last great Islamic empire, and the breaking up of its territories, the effects of which can be seen to this day: The israeli-palestinian conflict, and the rise of the now corrupt house of saud which led to 9/11 to name a few. Get this book if you wish to get a better understanding of why people are blowing themselves up in the middle east, and also some of the intrigues and conflicts in one of the greatest wars in the history of this planet.
Rating: 4
Summary: the real root of problems in the Middle East
Comment: Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace is a challenging read, but the reader is rewarded with a much clearer understanding of the causes of so many of the regions problems. In a nutshell the inept, myopic and largly ignorant bureaucracy of the Entente Powers (Britian and France specifically) laid the foundation for the issues the Middle East now struggles with.
From the Sykes and Balfour proposals in Palestine, to the support given the Saud family in Arabia, to the creation of "Trans-Jordan", "Iraq" and "Kuwait" (all of which were artifically created entitites desigend to suit the needs of the European powers) we see the rivalries and tensions that persist to the present day emerge, as voices of reason (T.E. Lawrence, for example) are drowned out by bureaucrats. While Fromkin argues that European involvement in the Middle East had been ongoing for nearly a century by 1918, the bulk of the book is concerned with events between 1917 - 1922. The result was a hodge-podge mosaic of European "mandates" (ie. colonies) and locally run fiefdoms (such as Arabia). Little wonder the area is known for its political instability.
A Peace to End all Peace is balanced in its approach to the subject and its treatment of key figures (both European, Jew, and Arab). The only criticism I have is its emphasis on politics at the expense of social and economic factors. It seems to me that one of the major flaws in the creation of the modern Middle East was a lack of understanding of local society and economics - a fact that persists to this day, and an obstacle to the establishment of effective communication between West and East. Nonetheless, I recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in a deeper examination of the Middle East.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent one-volume analysis
Comment: Mr. Fromkin takes on a formidable task -- covering an issue of significant complexity, such as the formation of many of the modern nations in the Middle East -- but pulls it off in style. His book achieves a nice blend of factual information (based on a wealth of background research) with fluid prose, making the book as informative as it is easy to read! Having come from that reagion myself, I was nicely suprised to learn new details, yet I was even more excited about Mr. Fromkin's discussion on the British political approach (an ignorance) about the region, which is painted in vivid color through discussions about the major political figures in the landscape. I am hard pressed to find a book on the subject with similar depth and readability, so I highly recommend it!
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Title: The Middle East by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0684832801 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0195144201 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 by Efraim Karsh, Inari Karsh ISBN: 0674005414 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren ISBN: 0195151747 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: From Beirut to Jerusalem (Updated with a New Chapter) by Thomas L. Friedman ISBN: 0385413726 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 August, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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