I originally read this book based on a favorable reference by Washington Post op-ed columnist Charles Krauthammer. The Six Day War is one of the most pivotal events in modern Middle East History. It is when Israel took control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. This is why you often hear pro-Palestinian pundits demand for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, meaning the borders before this war.

The Six Day War is also when five Arabs nations suffered an ignominious defeat that eventually led to the decline of the Arab Nationalist movement. Michael Oren is exceptional at recreating the incredibly tense days before this war. Syria remilitarizes the Golan Heights. The United Nations Emergency Forces are withdrawn from Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Egypt re-militarizes the Sinai Peninsula and blockades the vital Straits of Tiran. Arab nationalist fanatics are calling to "push the Jews into the sea." King Hussein of Jordan, while on a shaky relationship with Egyptian President Nasser, signs a pact to fight alongside Egypt. All the while President Johnson of the U.S. is warning Israel not to "start the war." (!) How could the Israeli Defense Forces overcome such great odds, let alone in six days!?

If you want to read about the Six Day War, you will not find a better book. Not only is this book highly respected for its factual content, it also is very exciting to read.

A very thorough and engaging book, "Six Days of War" was virtually impossible for me to put down. This is 'required reading' for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of current issues in the Middle East. the book will also be of assistance in understanding the rise of Pan-Arabism and Nasserism, the situation with the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza), the fate of Jerusalem (even now the subject of
contentious debate between Israel and the Palestinians) and Israel's (uneasy) relations with the Arab nations which surround her. Oren does an excellent job in presenting all sides of this complex war, as both the Arab nations and the Israelis have a compelling story to tell. If you are planning a trip to Israel anytime in the future, put this book at the top of your reading list!

I picked this book up after reading Oren's Power, Faith, and Fantasy (also a great read). His style and scholarship are excellent, it never feels dry and although there are many characters to keep track of you sort it out by the end.

The book chronicals the immiediate events leading up to the 67 war and goes through the war day by day. The chronology makes it a quick read for the length of the book because even though you probably know how it ends you want to find out what actions, luck, fate, etc. brought about the happenstance.

The length and content will satisfy anyone remotely interested but the book is also a great stepping stone to break into scholarly reading.

It will answer a lot of the "how" questions people have pertaining to the israeli aquisition of the golan and west bank

I have enjoyed reading this period as I lived it as a child living in Israel. I will purchase the vedeo as well. It is very important to write about this war and its causes.

Oren has produced a well researched and documented history of the Six Day War that is fast-paced and a very good read. Oren does a superb job of integrating the military operations with the political maneuvering of each of the parties involved. It provides excellent examples of the benefits of planning and leadership, and the risks associated with saber-rattling without making the necessary preparations for war. Having been part of the C/J-3 for one of the US military's COCOMs for the past 6 years, I believe that this book should be required reading for all military planners.

Accurate, detailed, long, too long. All the information you need and more is here, put in chronological order, from all sides, the planning and the making, the would-be's and the were, the personal interviews and recollections and the reporting. But it reads more as a police report than as an author book.

When it dwells into diplomacy and he-said and the other-said, its interests plummets, it becomes boring and frustrating. It's a huge work of collecting data all right, doing interviews to tens of people, etc, but I think readers would appreciate a more synthesized book than this one. Be specific, get to the point, don't just pour information like from a broken faucet. The author may use this as a lecture tool or as a text book in some college course, but for the general audience it's not fun.

Great history, very readable, explains politics and is generally quite unbiased. Not a detailed military history.

Pick up this book it's just amazing. it gives you details in a very understandable way. it's full of drama and a great page turner.

If you only have time for one book about the Six Day War, make it this one. One may choose to quibble with this or that to show off one's discernment, but quibbles quiver before the stern mountain of fact piled up by Mr. Oren. Un-spun facts are the most valuable thing to a history buff. This book has them. Read why the war started. Read how the Superpowers set out their pawns. Learn the real meaning of the "arab street" and why it is important. Watch what happens when national leaders get caught up in their own propaganda. One caution, after reading how the brightest and best, from all of the countries involved, acquitted themselves, you may be tempted to follow the biblical injunction to "put not your faith in princes" with renewed conviction.

This is an excellent book about the six-day war. The author is fair and impartial in his description. I Highly recommend it.

Post modernists argue that history is a myth spun by victors. Here is a war and here is a book that spells the death of postmodernism.

Oren's work is detailed, without losing a sense of perspective. It is rigorously well documented from Russian, French, Spanish, Arabic as well as English and Hebrew sources, yet never loses its pace or sense of growing tension. His empathy with and grasp of the Egyptian and Jordanian leadership's thinking is born from detailed study and interviews. I was amazed even at the detail of his account of Syrian officers and soldiers - a notoriously impenetrable field.

There is a times a sense of a creeping wisdom of hindsight in some partipants' accounts, which touches the narrative, but he spares noone sifting and sometimes painful analysis. Unlike others it's difficult to know from this book alone what views the author holds on many issues related to the justice of the war.

Oren is the unquestionable master of this field, and this is THE book to start with on the '67 war and will remain the standard by which other works are judged. It is a remarkable example of an objective, nuanced and sympathetic analysis of each party to the conflict.

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren is an in depth study of the 1967 Arab Israeli conflict. Oren has done an outstanding job of examining the regional politics prior to June 1967 and how they influenced individuals, political groups, and governments toward open warfare with Israel. Fully half the book deals with the political maneuvering behind the scenes and has an interesting perspective on the over arching geopolitical influences of the cold war superpowers on individual Middle Eastern countries. The second half deals with the actual outbreak of war and the eventual peace.

This is an important read in the sense that it sets the stage for today's unrest in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. These conflicts started 60 years ago and the most eye opening aspect is that they tend to be cycles of the same basic conflict. The six day war had a lasting influence on Israel, the Arab countries and the two superpowers that many readers may not be aware of today. Incompetence, miscalculations, and personal failings of all the participants are exposed in a fair and even handed manner and he should be given a great deal of credit for writing an honest unbiased history of the six days war.

This book is outdated and contains many formerly believed myths about the 1967 war. Previously classified Johnson administration documentation was released from the U.S. State Department Office of the Historian in January 2004, which clearly proves that Israel attacked Eqypt even though Egypt was trying to avoid war using shuttle diplomacy. Most historians have not updated their work to reflect the diplomatic realities that have been documented during the days before the war, and this book is one of them.

The book is great fictional story-telling for people who want to build Israeli nationalistic pride, but I would not recommend it if you are a serious historian.

This was my first attempt at buying a used book, and it was a good experience. The book and binding are in excellent condition. The first 2 chapters had some highlighting in them, otherwise it was like-new.
The book itself is excellent. A fantastic analysis of the facts leading up to the war. Mr. Oren's other book,, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, is similarly excellent. They complement each other.

"Six Days of War" by Michael B. Oren is a masterful account of the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria providing military support. Extensively researching archives and interviewing commanders and politicians, Mr. Oren shows how politics and miscalculation drove the Middle East to an intense war that continues to shape the region.

Oren's thesis draws on chaos theory (AKA, the butterfly effect): that small, seemingly random events, can build into huge, unexpected results. For Oren, one such key event was Israel's November 1966 counter terror raid on the West Bank village of Samua. Intended as a surgical strike to encourage the West Bank residents to appeal to Jordan's King Hussein to clamp down on al-Fatah (the PLO), the raid degenerated into a pitched firefight with the well-trained Jordanian army. Instead of appealing to King Hussein for protection, West Bank Palestinians erupted in riot, demanding his ouster. This event would directly lead six months later to King Hussein's dramatic flight to Egypt on the eve of the war to see President Nasser, his bitterest Arab rival, to enter into a formal alliance with Egypt. This alliance placed the Jordanian armed forces under direct Egyptian military control, heightening the threat to Israel and forcing the Israelis to preempt the Arab armies gathering around it.

The ostensible start of the 1967 crisis came when Egypt's president Nasser remilitarized the Sinai Peninsula in May, ejecting U.N. observers and declaring a blockade of the Straits or Tiran, cutting off the Israel port of Eilat. These actions were done with active encouragement of the Soviet Union. For a few weeks, Nasser was once again on top of the Arab world as its leader.

In this it was said that Nasser wanted the fruits of war but not war itself. Oren's book shows how this led to the Egyptians placing poorly-officered and abysmally-supplied units into the Sinai, only to have them destroyed by outnumbered Israelis within a month.

In the end, the Israelis inflicted casualties on the combined Arab armies at the rate of 25 to 1, destroying 85% of Egypt's military hardware.

Mr. Oren wraps up his book with a thoughtful afterword written in November 2002 and ends with an interview by Prof. Fouad Ajami of the author.

"Six Days of War" is a useful read for military strategist (how civilian political decisions drive conflict), political scientist (how events drive political decisions), and historian alike.

This book is a must-read for anybody who wishes to familiarize themselves with the modern Arab-Israeli conflict. It is an easy read, and it weighs the war even-handedly without jumping to conclusions. The story is fascinating and extremely important in today's middle east.

This book was reccomended to me by my Grandfather, an extremely well-read PhD who had more books than every version of the bible ever produced.

I picked it up at his suggestion, and was instantly glued to it. Oren is an excellent wirter, he uses accurate historcial fact dervied from an cornicopia of new sources, and put it all together in this brilliant book to create an addictive read.
Oren makes history a real page-turning adventure, even perhaps, for those normally not interested.

Highly reccommended to anyone interested in Military history, the arab-israeli wars, or anything along similar lines.

Oren uses interviews, Internet sites, newspapers, magazines,and books in Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, and Spanish to piece together what led up to the June 1967 war in the Middle East and goes on to chronicle the war itself and what happened to the key players in its aftermath. Although a secular historian, he describes the emotional outburst Israeli soldiers experienced when taking possession of Temple Mount. He quotes Arik Akhmon as saying, "...though I'm not religious I don't think there was a man who wasn't overwhelmed with emotion. Something special happened." He goes on to talk about spontaneous prayers and spiritual songs breaking out at that moment.

It's interesting to note that "The Israeli government never set specific goals for the war," according to deputy operations chief Rehavam Ze'evi. Time after time enemy troops were confused and the Israelis had easy going. It was supernatural the way things unfolded.

Oren acknowledges the limitations of trying to be objective. It isn't possible, but he attempts to report what happened based on the evidence he collected.

As someone who has studied the region for years, Oren does an excellent job of painting a picture of the broad political environment leading up to, during, and immediately after the war. He describes in detail the events, and people which formed the conditions for the war as well as shaped its course. He is able to drawn upon diverse sources such as declassified Israeli, US, Russian, and Egyptian documents. I can't stress enough that this book provides a broad based and comprehensive discussion of The Six Day War.

At first I was skeptical about this book. It's hard enough to get a balanced account of a battle without it skewing towards the victor, but then I heard the author is Jewish and he now lives in Israel (although he is of American descent). My thoughts were, how balanced can this account be? My fears were assuaged by the editorial reviews, and having read the book I can verify that it is as fair and balanced as possible, given the limitations placed on the author: namely, the lack of information forthcoming from the regimes that were on the losing side. I suppose this is understandable in the context of those governments - democracies like Israel (and the U.S.) declassify documents much sooner than other types of governments. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the leaderships of the losing countries are still in place - the Ba'ath Party in Syria, the industrio-military complex of Egypt, and the Hussein monarchy in Jordan.

So, given that the account is scholarly and balanced, how does the book read? I was pleased to note that the author, Michael Oren, is an accomplished storyteller and the book mostly reads with all the spice and excitement of an early Tom Clancy novel. It flashes back and forth from the battlefield to the governments to the man on the street. More time must be spent on Israel, naturally enough, because the decisions were made by committees (when not made ad hoc on the battlefield). It takes some time to describe the arguments. In contrast, the facts that Egyptian decision-making structure was essentially non-existent, and that Jordan was an absolute monarchy, meant that there was little to report about internal politics in those countries. Oren is also adept at keeping an enormous cast of "characters" alive and in play - I never felt at a loss, even though this is the only book I've read on the conflict and was not even alive in 1967.

This brings me two the first of my two criticisms of the book: there is not enough material on the actions of Syria and her government. Although Syria didn't do all that much fighting, they were certainly involved in both the diplomatic and military efforts. Even so, after having read the book I couldn't tell you the name of a single Syrian leader or general off the top of my head. This is is stark contrast to the amount of time spent in the Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Amman. The second shortcoming is the length of the narrative describing the diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis before the shooting started. Although necessary to fully describe the history of the conflict, did we really need to be told about every phone call between President Johnson and the Soviets? Every diplomatic overture from the U.N.? As such, pages 100-200 drag somewhat. We are ultimately rewarded by the quality of the narrative once the war begins, so ultimately it is worth the slog through the diplomacy.

This is the first book I have read on this subject. I actually bought it at the PX in Tikrit. I was looking for a book that helped me understand the history of Arab conflicts, and this book definetly did that. I would recomend this book to anyone serving overseas or just anyone that has an intrest in Arab history. As a first step in learning the history of the area, this book is definetly deep reading, but it reads well and keeps you interested.

This book does an excellent job of showing how the conflict in the Middle East was escalated. It gets to the pertinent details without getting bogged down in the complexities. It stays very focused and covers how the middle east coalition went to war with Israel. The stunning defeat by this coalition was shocking to the world and is clearly explained in this book. Easily five stars and very well done. This is a good book for those who know a lot about the Middle East or those who are just starting. If you want to understand the Middle East conflict this is an essential book to have.

I was looking for a detailed account of the sacrifices and bravery of individual soldiers fighting in the front lines during the six day war. What I got instead was a full account of the overall events, starting with 169 tedious pages of the step by step of the political communications and misunderstandings between the parties that were involved directly or indirectly on the events leading to the war, followed by a chronological description of the overall battle, and closing with and again political process that brought the war to the end.

Not what I was looking for, but I do not regret reading the book, because the author does a great job of putting the whole chain of events of the six days war in a comprehensible manner.

This book is one of the best I have ever read on the Middle Eastern conflicts in general, and certainly the best about the Six-Day War. A lot of the previous reviewers have covered in details what makes this book so good. I would like however to comment on one thing that struck me throughout the book: the hate against America that virulently emerged in 1967 from the Arab dictators such as Egypt's Nasser or Syria's al-Assad who were using anti-American propaganda as a means to shore up their regimes and rally around the Arab street behind them. The Great Big Lie (the Arab regimes pretended that US ground and air forces intervened massively in the war to help Israel) is quite revealing... I thought anti-America hate was more a thing of recent times...but I was shocked to see how much the same slogans and arguments against America that we are hearing today were the same ones that were utter daily by Arab regimes at the time. It sounded eerily as today's Al Qaeda anti-US messages, except that the religious overtones of today were replaced by anti-imperialistic overtones. Nothing has changed under the Middle East sun basically, and this continuous hatred has now span more than one or 2 generations. Of course, America has not often questioned its Middle East policy towards Arabs and must share a part of the blame for the sorry situation Middle East is in, but Arab regimes are no less responsible of having willingly spread lies and misinformation about America.

There is a fundamental difference between `armistice' and `peace'.
Armistice is military.
Peace is political.
((It is strange to see that those who wanted to lend their names to `peace between Israel/Arabs, have been killed. (!!!) Sadat - Rabin - and even Arafat whose sudden demise is still questionable.))

However, just one point of clarification: going back in history to the November 29th. 1947 UN Partition Plan of Palestine to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict, it is worth mentioning that the Arabs did indeed accept Partition.
The irony is that they (Arabs) have not had the audacity to declare it openly.
Arab delegations worked and attended meetings the gist of which had been the `Partition Plan', but never echoed their acceptance, with concern, to significant number of the Palestinian population, most of all to Hajj Amine Husseini and his supporters.
Whereas the `Jews' (there was no Israel per se in 1947) while publicly and vocally advocated their support for `Partition', actually worked against it and fought in 1948 with full force and got more than prescribed in the UN Resolution 181.

I give this book five stars due to its excellence, but not because I would recommend it to the general public. If you do not have a serious interest in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war then this is going to prove a cumbersome read. It's too bad Oren doesn't write an abbreviated and more accessible account for the general reader, and refer those interested in a deeper and more comprehensive study to this book.

Oren's book is densely packed with names, dates and places. It's not a casual read by any means. It has 75 pages of notes and 17 pages of bibliography. But it answers once and for all who "started" the 1967 Middle East war and why Israel subsequently extended its territory in Jerusalem, and into the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The fault lies upon Egypt specifically, and much of the Arab world in general.

I say "once and for all" because the only way a different interpretation of this period of history could be made would be to offer a counter argument to each of the 327 pages of text and 75 pages of notes and come up with a reasonable conclusion other than that reached by Oren. This is not going to happen. Oren has basically closed the book on this controversial chapter of Israel's tormented history.

I give this book five stars due to its excellence, but not because I would recommend it to the general public. If you do not have a serious interest in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war then this is going to prove a cumbersome read. It's too bad Oren doesn't write an abbreviated and more accessible account for the general reader, and refer those interested in a deeper and more comprehensive study to this book.

Oren's book is densely packed with names, dates and places. It's not a casual read by any means. It has 75 pages of notes and 17 pages of bibliography. But it answers once and for all who "started" the 1967 Middle East war and why Israel subsequently extended its territory in Jerusalem, and into the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The fault lies upon Egypt specifically, and much of the Arab world in general.

I say "once and for all" because the only way a different interpretation of this period of history could be made would be to run the historical gamut of all 327 pages of text and 75 pages of notes and offer a reasonable conclusion other than that reached by Oren. This is not going to happen. Oren has basically closed the book on this controversial chapter of Israel's tormented history.

Oren's book is a modern classic. Since the other reviews here go into such depth, it would seem superfluous for me to do so as well. I did, however, want to mention two things which impressed me about the book and which may not have been mentioned in other reviews:

1) I won't say the book reads like a novel, but Oren's writing is so good, and the story he tells so compelling, that the book is filled with a building tension much like you would find in a fictional political thriller. I already knew the general story of the 1967 war, but I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next (i.e. what Oren was going to reveal next).

2) Oren's excellent research makes it abundantly clear that the Arab powers were not only planning and preparing for a war of agression against Israel, but that they were BOASTING of doing so. The sheer bombastic stupidity of the Arab leaders comes through loud and clear even though Oren never attacks them. He is always fair. It also is wonderful to learn what extent the 'big lie' sort of action played in the war. A fine example was Nassar's claim that his airforce was destroyed by the USA rather than the Israelis! The USA was in no way involved. The Arab leaders repeatedly lied to each other and their peoples in order to cover up their own staggering failures. In that regard, nothing has changed in the last 40 years!

A fascinating, wonderful book. You'll thoroughly enjoy it.

I give this book five stars due to its excellence, but not because I would recommend it to the general public. If you do not have a serious interest in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war then this is going to prove a cumbersome read. It's too bad Oren doesn't write an abbreviated and more accessible account for the general reader, and refer those interested in a deeper and more comprehensive study to this book.

Oren's book is densely packed with names, dates and places. It's not a casual read by any means. It has 75 pages of notes and 17 pages of bibliography. But it answers once and for all who "started" the 1967 Middle East war and why Israel subsequently extended its territory in Jerusalem, and into the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The fault lies upon Egypt specifically, and much of the Arab world in general.

I say "once and for all" because the only way a different interpretation of this period of history could be made would be to run the historical gamut of all 327 pages of text and 75 pages of notes and offer a reasonable conclusion other than that reached by Oren. This is not going to happen. Oren has basically closed the book on this controversial chapter of history.

This simply is a terrific book. The author skillfully weaves an analysis of the diplomatic and military aspects of the 1967 War into a factually thrilling account of the conflict. There is adequate detail--not too much, not too little--about the battles and the maps are good (although sometimes the differing arrows are a bit confusing). Oren makes the personalities involved come to life so that you almost--almost!--can feel the situation he depicts. If you take a little time to study the analysis and compare the time frames of the differing situations, you'll be intimately familiar with this monumental conflict.

What is great about this book is the total approach. The book must be the definitive book on the subject. It is well written and well researched.

In this book you will find a very detailed and comprehensive nuts and bolts description of the military conflict step by step through the political events leading up to the war and the conflict itself. The book includes good photos and maps and gives lots of details on troop movements. Also it discusses what was happening politically in each country surounding Israel, the UN, and the role of the big powers.

You cannot go wrong with this book. Just excellent.

In an historical moment when the '1967 borders' are referred to as a simple fact - except in the offices of Hamas and their compeers - it is necessary to be reminded that these lines in the sand were the provisional conclusion of six days when blood ran plentifully around and upon them and nothing seemed obvious.

I am always astonished when an Israeli or, say, Egyptian, historian is able to narrate the events of '67 and '73 with such dispassionate analysis. Oren has done so and then - to boot - he has written eloquently about June 1967 so as not to require that his reader share his own detailed knowledge of those events.

I was eight years old in 1967, and so I find the personality portraits of Dayan, Nasser, Johnson, Kosygin et al. and the photographic plates in this fine work utterly fascinating.

It's difficult for those of us who have come of age in a period when America is reflexively viewed as the uncritical enabler of all things Israeli that even in 1967 things were not seen in that light by any of the players.

So much has changed. So much has stayed the same.

Oren is a capable guide for sorting out when, where, and how.

Michael Oren provides a even-handed context to the Six Days War, helping the reader comprehend the current morass in Israel and its environs. What Oren does particularly well in this book is draw the curtain on the machinations of both Arabs and Israeli power brokers in the years, then days, then hours, leading up to conflict.

What was particularly striking to this reader was the vastly significant role that the now-defunct Soviet Union played in provoking war in the area. Also eye-opening, but not entirely surprising, was how utterly toothless the U.N. was in helping alleviate tensions in the region.

This excellent book leads to the inevitable question: Will there ever be an "accommodation" between Palestinians and Israelis? Maybe in some distant, enlightened future, but with the democratic election of Hamas in Palestinian territories, the short term prospects are bleak.

Michael Oren exhaustively provides the context of the Six Days War, helping the reader comprehend the current morass in Israel/Palestine. It is fascinating to see the events unfold with the curtain drawn on the machinations of both Arabs and Jews. What is striking to the modern reader is the important role that the now-defunct Soviet Union played in provoking war in the area, as well as how utterly toothless the U.N. was in helping alleviate tensions.

This excellent book leads to the inevitable question: Will there ever be an "accommodation" between Palestinians and Israelis? Maybe in some distant, enlightened future, but with the democratic election of Hamas in Palestinian territories, the short term prospects are bleak. (Where are the Muslim peacemakers?)

In June 3, 2003 Presidio published Oren's "history" on the '67 War.

On January 12, 2004 the US State Department released diplomatic cables and previously classified Johnson era communications which debunk an entire generation of Israeli propaganda masquerading as "history".

To see the real facts about the "heroic" Israeli preemption, see the book "Deadly Doctrine"

http://www.irmep.org/dd_ch1.htm

It'll change the way you think about so-called "first strikes".

In June 3, 2003 Presidio published Oren's "history" on the '67 War.

On January 12, 2004 the US State Department released diplomatic cables and previously classified Johnson era communications which debunk an entire generation of Israeli propaganda masquerading as "history".

To see the real facts about the "heroic" Israeli preemption, see the book "Deadly Doctrine"

http://www.irmep.org/dd_ch1.htm

It'll change the way you think about so-called "first strikes".

i cant believe im reading books on war and history and enjoying them! this books held my attention the entire way through. written through the eyes of a jewish observer, i recommend finding a book written through the eyes of an arab BUT definitely read this one if you are interested in the war of '67. i found myself entertained by the chaos taking place behind the scenes... nasser and 'amer's mental break downs and the israeli governments inability to agree on how to handle the situation read like a middle eastern drama...

Six Days of War is exceptional because it focuses less on detailed military engagements and almost entirely on the diplomatic/strategic maneuvering. Oren uses recently declassified material to narrate the harrowing conflict. He covers the pressures exerted by superpower interests, political dealmaking, and personal conversations between major players. From the standpoint of strict military history, Oren concerns himself with top-level events: the Arab "Big Lie" of victory, widespread deceptions by Nasser's lieutenants, Israeli hesitations to strike (the unforgettable image of Rabin chain-smoking comes to mind). Oren then goes on to tie the repercussions of the conflict to the current political map of the Middle East.

Six Days of War is history at its finest and should be read by anyone interested in the modern Middle East.

Oren has compiled one of the most compelling, detailed, researched, validated, interesting, all-encompassing tome regarding the the 1967 June War (Six-Day War) between the Arabs, Jews, Americans, Russians, Britons, and French, et al.

While most history books of the Middle East are based in a fundamental point of view of either military or political. For the most part, most authors consolidate around the central locus of military or political, with nary a touch of the other. Coming from a strong military working enivornment, I have come across swaths of such books, that will focus on the intricate details of each military campaign, and yet neglect the as-intricately woven politcs that thread through the entire populated world. On the other hand, many an author have dedicated their effort into the socio-politiburo of the times, assuage the military aggression wraught forth on the plains of the lands revered as Holy by millions around the world, of many faiths.

Oren's locution in displaying both the cunning, strategic-thinking policies and tormented, emotional ideologies involved on both the Arab and Jewish sides is mesmorizing. This is a critical junction as most authors will use this phraseology to gloss of neglect of information, yet Oren manages to keep the level of credibility, authentication, and verification at utmost, from cover to cover.

As a government analyst whose area of specialty is the Middle East, I take great comfort in knowing that there do exist authors who successfully complete the task of backing up their titles. This book truly gives every aspect possibly in giving the reader a near complete analysis of the events leading up to the War, its events, and the post-war efforts. A fantastic read to incorporate into any one's Middle East library. This link in a chain of books (events) will supplant any predecessor.

While trying to keep this concise, I will lastest give my recommendation for Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

This book casts aside many of our post 9-11 assumptions. Such as Anti-Americanism in the Middle East being of recent vintage or terrorism beginning with the Intifada. At the same time one realizes that the conflict over Israel's existence, predates its establishment and is nearly 100 years old. The lack of popular legimacy of governments in the region today dates back nearly a century or more. The difficulty in bridging over these issues is evident from this book.

A riveting read from an excellent and eloquent historian and former military man.

This is an excellent history of the Six Day War. It was made possible when the 30-year declassification period expired in 1997 and all sorts of material became available to historians.

Given that Egypt ought to have been aware of Israel's recalcitrance to fight and Israel's military strength, it has long been puzzling that Egypt committed acts of war that seemed highly likely to provoke an all-out Israeli response. It has also been puzzling that Jordan went along with the war, even when it stood to lose territory. And it was even puzzling that Syria kept shelling Israel during the early parts of the war when it stood to lose the Golan. But Oren shows how it all happened.

We see some preliminary skirmishes in which Syria provoked an Israeli reply. And false Soviet warnings of an Israeli buildup against Syria. We also see that Egyptian President Nasser was aware that there was no such Israeli buildup but in May of 1967 went ahead with kicking the UNEF forces out of the Sinai anyway. Nasser might have been prepared to risk an undesired war to do this. However, he then continued by closing the Straits of Tiran, an act of war which made a major conflict very likely. That would have been truly illogical had Nasser's intention been to avoid war. And we discover that Nasser did indeed plan a first strike (Operation Dawn) that was cancelled in the last few hours only because Nasser feared that the plan had been compromised. That allowed Israel to get away with its failure to act at once when Egypt closed the Straits. In June, Israel gained a big advantage by striking Egypt first and destroying two thirds of the Egyptian air force on the ground.

While there are excellent descriptions of exactly how the war proceeded, the most interesting questions Oren answers are when and how Israel made the decisions to liberate the rest of Jerusalem, capture the West Bank, and take the Golan heights from Syria. Oren stresses that none of these events, not even the taking of all of Sinai, were in any Israeli Master Plan, and that these decisions were made on the spot. Many other outcomes were still possible even a day after the outbreak of major hostilities.

This is a fascinating book. If there is any moral, it should be that ignorance can have deadly consequences.

When I first got hold of Oren's stellar Six Days of War in April, 2002, I tore through the advanced readers' copy and swiftly predicted it would be a runaway best-seller. I was not wrong. As history books go, this one has had an extraordinary run, and it is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the true genesis of the current situation in the Middle East.

Oren rooted through boxes and boxes of declassified Presidential and U.S. State Department documents, as well as those of various Arab and Israeli government offices. What he found puts new historians like Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris to shame.

We knew, of course, that the Soviets in the 1950s and 1960s copiously supplied arms to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and others of the Arab nations. But Oren also shows that the Soviet government in 1966 and 1967 meddled more dangerously. For example, top Soviet officials spread false "intelligence" to Arab governments about alleged Israeli plans for a massive onslaught. Oren shows that Israeli restraint before the war actually encouraged the cataclysmic Arab aggression which followed.

Sound familiar? We can draw lessons from Oren's impressive history. Appeasing tyrants and offering more land to people who do not want peace is not the solution. I don't know what is. But this fantastic piece of historical investigation shows that recycling the same tired old formulas simply will not work.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

So much attention has been paid to such a short event, yet the Six Day War did indeed lead strongly in the making of the modern Middle East. Hence the subtitle to Six Days of War, Michael Oren's comprehensive account of the events leading into and through that conflict.

This is a comprehensive survey. Thus, the reader may expect not only military matters, but also extensive coverage of national and international politics. We see how Israel and the involved Arab states dealt with the other major powers of the world, most prominently the US and the Soviet Union. Drawing often on newly available sources, Oren paints a detailed picture of the world situation leading into the war and how it was carried out. So far as politics are concerned, the tone is strictly analytical. Six Days of War is not a cheerleading polemic, and neither Israel nor the Arab states get favored treatment. While this allows the reader to absorb the facts and the events, it does make for a somewhat colorless account. I don't care how many people say otherwise, this is not, in the end, an exciting book. In a sense this is puzzling, because the Six Day War is certainly one of the most dramatic single events of the last century. For excitement, the interested reader is directed to the content, not to the style.

But what content there is! Oren may not editorialize, but I can, and Israel's handling of Arab aggression is nothing short of remarkable. Despite overwhelming numbers lined up against it, and even with its own internally fractured politics, Israel managed to survive and beat back decisively the leviathan of the Arab world's military might. If you really want to know how the current political geography of the Middle East came about, here is the place to be.

Oren did a tremendous amount of research for this book , and discovered much new material. He was especially resourceful in deepening the understanding of the Russian position and role. He also found much new material in regard to Egypt's plan and strategy. Oren too reveals how ' near a thing' the Six-
Day War was to opening in a completely different way, with an Egyptian attack. Perhaps even more importantly Oren shows how threatened Israel felt by the closing of the Canal, by Nasser's threats, how Israel's lightning strike of June 5 was taken not to conquer territory but to defend the existence of the state. Oren shows how much hesitation and infighting were involved in the decisions around this.
What is interesting is Oren also dwells a great deal on the Arab side telling their story in a fuller and more reliable way than
had been done previously.
This is a well- researched balanced and credible account of the war.

I am not as wild about this book as a lot of other reviewers. One problem is that the book needs more maps to accompany its narratives of the wartime battles. It has a few tiny maps, but I could not place most of the book's geographic references. Its hard to understand what's going on in a battle when you have no idea where it is. Secondly, the prose is repetitive and in need of editing. On the positive side, the book's coverage of the war's military and diplimatic events was first rate.

There are already many good reviews of this book, so I'll keep it short. You will love this book. The introduction and setup of the conflict is perfectly informative, and the chapter on the first day is alone worth the price of the book. I was reading this thinking I can't believe a country actually risked everything, sending out virtually every fighter plane in their air force, in order to save themselves from annihilation from all sides. Amazing. If you're interested in this subject, this book is going to grip you like flypaper (hey, I think I just made up a metaphor). This is the kind of book you want to own hardback and signed by the author. Not sure how to do that.
The last thing I would say is that you're going to need one of those bedside dictionaries - this Ivy Leaguer uses some florid language!