This is an absolutely first-rate history book: it covers the complexity without simplification, yet tells a riveting story with a huge cast of larger than life characters (Churchill, Ataturk, Lenin, Lawrence of Arabia, and many others). It is also superlatively written.

The book begins with the machinations leading up to the Great War. The Ottoman Empire - in decline for over 300 years, yet a useful "buffer" for the Western powers against the Russian Empire in the "Great Game" - is finally coming apart with the rise of the western-minded "young Turks." That means that it is finally collapsing and Britain and France must decide whether to continue to prop up its vast territorial holdings or to nakedly seek to carve up its territories for the benefit of their own empires. France coveted Syria and Lebanon, GB the rest. In the end, it is what they got.

Once the Great War began, however, the Turks allied themselves with the Germans, for which CHurchill was unjustly blamed (he confiscated two destroyers that Britain's shipyards had just manufactured for the Turks). This led directly to the catastrophically mismanaged invasion of the Dardanelles, in a bid to end the War by pushing a wedge into the Germanic coalition from the South, again Churchill's idea. (Amazingly, the collapse of Bulgaria was what finally ended WWI 4 years later, as the allies entered the gap). As the Turks rallied, the allies turned to making alliances with the Arabs and others under loose Turkish suzerainty.

The greatest accomplishment of the book is to dissect the mentality of British policymakers, which by today's standards was almost ghoulishly primitive. First, they had a 19C colonialist bias, which meant that they were by nature destined to rule the "brown" races, from India to Arabia, for their own good. WHile there was much strategic calculation, such as guarding the Suez canal for freighter traffic, it was principally to maintain the glory of the British Empire as conceived under Queen Victoria. Second, they utterly lacked basic knowledge of not just the Turks, but also the Arabs and Zionists. For example, beyond sensationalist and romantic travel literature, the only available source to understand the Turk was a history written in the 18C! Few of the aristocratic elite spoke any of the languages and most were openly racist and anti-semitic. Third, there were conspiracy theories that would appear absolutely lunatic today (to paraphrase Fromkin). Thus, there were top policymakers who actually believed that Jews controlled not just the young Turks, but also the emerging Bolshievics and even the German Kaiser's inner circle!

This ignorance and arrogant disregard for other points of view would be laughable were they not responsible for the decisions that set up the system of shakey nation states we see today in the Middle East. To cultivate the non-existent Jewish cabal, the Brits came up with the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the validity of a zionist state. (Interestingly, like many fundamentalists today, this support gained indispensable credence because a state of Jews in Palestine was a Biblical prerequisite for Armageddon and the assumed ascension of Christians to paradise.) In addition, the Brits designated several families, including the Hashemites - Aristocrats chosen first by the Turks and educated in the Harem of the Sublime Port - as a way to gain control over all Arabs tribes as they believed they would obey the dictates of the highest religious authority. Once the Brits chose these people, they were stuck with them, which was how the new states eventually were established.

As the War came to an end, GB and France - now distrustful of eachothers' imperial ambitions to the point that they almost went to war! - were unable to devote attention and resources to nationbuilding, though this did not stop them from setting up what were supposed to become modern states in places that knew neither secular politics nor any sense of national purpose. They just installed people they hoped they could trust (read "control"), which explains who became leaders of what petty kingdoms at that time. Many, though not all of them are still there and almost completely lack political legitimacy over vast territories that were governed by independent tribes under a loose Turkish confederation. It is no wonder that these artificial constructs are so unstable, mixing peoples with modern weaponry and infrastructure who for centuries were isolated and divided by religion, ethnicity, and power politics. The new leaders and their subjects had little idea how to wield the tools of the modern state, while nascent nationalisms were undermining the western empires.

This is the story of the greatest watershed of the 20C: sowing the seeds of the end of western domination as the impulse grew in colonial peoples to govern themselves. Not only did Turkey reinvent itself, but the Soviet Union was born, and the western powers (with the exception of the US) had squandered their human and financial resources catastrophically. Amazingly, what was going on in the Middle East at that time was seen as a backwater sideshow: virtually no one recognized the magnitude of change that was unleashed.

If there is any failing of the book, it is its less diligent effort to penetrate the minds of the Arabs and Turks. The author brilliantly delineates the moribund reasoning from within the 19C western empires, but does not explain what the powerful indigenous peoples were thinking and feeling.

Warmly recommended. This is one of the best history books I have read in years.

This is one of those history books that achieves the status of art: it covers the complexity without simplification, yet tells a riveting story with a huge cast of larger than life characters (Churchill, Ataturk, Lenin, Lawrence of Arabia, and many others). It is also superlatively written.

The book begins with the machinations leading up to the Great War. The Ottoman Empire - in decline for over 300 years, yet a useful "buffer" for the Western powers against the Russian Empire in the "Great Game" - is finally coming apart with the rise of the western-minded "young Turks." That means that it is finally collapsing and Britain and France must decide whether to continue to prop up its vast territorial holdings or to nakedly seek to carve up its territories for the benefit of their own empires. France coveted Syria and Lebanon, GB the rest. In the end, it is what they got.

Once the Great War began, however, the Turks allied themselves with the Germans, for which CHurchill was unjustly blamed (he confiscated two destroyers that Britain's shipyards had just manufactured for the Turks). This led directly to the catastrophically mismanaged invasion of the Dardanelles, in a bid to end the War by pushing a wedge into the Germanic coalition from the South. (Amazingly, the collapse of Bulgaria was what finally ended WWI 4 years later, as the allies entered the gap). As the Turks rallied, the allies turned to making alliances with the Arabs and others under loose Turkish suzerainty.

The greatest accomplishment of the book is to dissect the mentality of British policymakers, which by today's standards was almost ghoulishly primitive. First, they had a 19C colonialist bias, which meant that they were by nature destined to rule the "brown" races, from India to Arabia, for their own good. WHile there was much strategic calculation, such as guarding the Suez canal for freighter traffic, it was also to maintain the glory of the British Empire as conceived under Queen Victoria. Second, they utterly lacked basic knowledge of not just the Turks, but also the Arabs and Zionists. For example, beyond sensationalist and romantic travel literature, the only available source to understand the Turk was a history written in the 18C! Few of the aristocratic elite spoke any of the languages and most were openly racist and anti-semitic. Third, there were conspiracy theories that would appear absolutely lunatic today (to paraphrase Fromkin). Thus, there were top policymakers who actually believed that Jews controlled not just the young Turks, but also the emerging Bolshevics and even the Imperial German inner circle!

This ignorance and lack of knowledge would be laughable were they not responsible for the decisions that set up the system of nation states we see today in the Middle East. To cultivate the Jews, the Brits came up with the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the validity of a zionist state. (Interestingly, like many fundamentalists today, this support gained credence because a state of Israel was a Biblical prerequisite for Armageddon and the assumed ascension of Christians to paradise.) In addition, the Brits designated several families, including the Hashemites - Aristocrats chosen first by the Turks and educated in the Harem of the Sublime Port - as a way to gain control over all Arabs tribes as they believed they would obey the dictates of the highest religious authority. Once the Brits chose these people, they were stuck with them, which was how the states eventually were established.

As the War came to an end, GB and France - now distrustful of eachothers' imperial ambitions to the point that they almost went to war! - were unable to devote attention and resources to nationbuilding, though this did not stop them from setting up what were supposed to become modern states in places that knew neither secular politics nor any sense of national purpose. They just installed people they hoped they could trust (read "control"), which explains who became leaders of what petty kingdoms at that time. Many, though not all of them are still there and almost completely lack political legitimacy over vast territories that were governed by tribes under a loose turkish confederation. It is no wonder that these artificial constructs are so unstable, mixing peoples with modern weaponry and infrastructure who for centuries were isolated and divided by religion, ethnicity, and politics. The new leaders and their subjects had little idea how to wield the tools of the modern state, while nascent nationalisms were undermining the western empires.

This is the story of the greatest watershed of the 20C: sowing the seeds of the end of western domination as the impulse grew in colonial peoples to govern themselves. Not only did Turkey reinvent itself, but the Soviet Union was born, and the western powers (with the exception of the US) had squandered their human and financial resources catastrophically. Amazingly, what was going on in the Middle East at that time was seen as a backwater sideshow: virtually no one recognized the magnitude of change that was unleashed.

If there is any failing of the book, it is its less diligent effort to penetrate the minds of the Arabs and Turks. The author brilliantly delineates the moribund reasoning from within the 19C western empires, but does not explain what the powerful indigenous peoples were thinking and feeling.

Warmly recommended. This is one of the best history books I have ever read.

I would have given this book six stars. A facinating read, leaving me to wonder why we ever thought we could succeed in immediate and radical change? Sadly, I supported GW!

Ron Marlar (a retired USAF officer, college professor, school teacher, living currently in Florida)

I bought from Amazon.com recently A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin to replace a copy of the book that I "borrowed" from my son several years ago. He is a military officer, serving since 1985 in uniform and has survived Clinton's debacles of US troops as part of NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo, failure to provide the military what they needed to preclude "Blackhawk Down" of Mogadishu, Somalia, the no fly zones, the dithering around in response to repeated Islamic jihadists attacks on US people, facilities and interests around the world for decades, and finally thanks to Bush, combat in Iraq.
My son has bought the book to share in his current jobs with Congressmembers and their staffers, including those of John Murtha. I have read the book now many times and recommended it to people with whom I discuss frequently the Middle East - the current focus of our world and so vital to our future.
The book is a heavily documented, authoritative history. Among other things the book tells the story of the past interests of Great Britain, the French, Germans and others in the Middle East leading up to and since World War I, the history that guides their current interests, policies and actions, their division of the Middle East, creation of the Modern Middle East and the Modern State of Israel.
There is a point: Since a Modern State of Israel was created by unilateral declarations, e.g., the Balfour Declaration of 1917, international agreements and UN Resolution 181 of 1947 there is by necessity and definition an Ancient Israel. Indeed there is, and Hebrews have been in the area continuously throughout recorded history despite the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles, Roman destruction, the Diaspora and the Holocaust.
The Jews established a State pursuant to UN Resolution 181. The Palestinians, whoever they were and are, did not at the insistence of other Arab and Muslim countries on the premise that to do so would recognize the Modern State of Israel.
I recommend the book to anyone who wants to understand the things I have mentioned above and the chaos of Islam. Not to have some grasp of these things today is to bask in ignorance. The notes and bibliography of A Peace to End All Peace offer a lifetime of reading and study for most people.

I had this book around for quite a while before I got around to reading it. When I did I was pleased that it did endeavor to address all the issues surrounding the creation of the modern middle east... but to get there it seems to wander quite a bit at times.

A great book nevertheless. Just plan on spending quite a bit of time with it.

The last 2 chapters were disappointing.
In the last one he makes a quick 10 page conclusion of everything, that I thought was just poor;
I have a feeling he had a deadline to meet and those last 10 pages he regurgitated the night before it was due.
All in all,
it was interesting, but very, very dense. I would say university history class level.
I would say that I know more now on the history than I did before, but there was such a huge mass of information that you really need to stick to this book and not stop for too long or you'll just forget everything.

Despite the poor conclusion, he did say something interesting there:
Basically he said that the current system was never meant for Arabia.
The Europeans had concurred the world, and the last place to concur was the Middle East.
They had concurred America, north and south,
Australia, New Zealand, east Asia, Africa...
Everything was colonized by them.
They believed in this secular nation-state, which worked in Europe, but had never been introduced to the Middle East.
First Islam conquered the whole area, and
then the ottomans took over for 700 years.
Also, the fact that all the leaders were put in place by the English and French meant that the local people had no faith in their politicians, and didn't understand their borders.
For example, the Saudi-Jordanian border is the site of where Ibn Saud tried to invade what is now Jordan,
but Jordan had king Abdullah, put in place by the English, so the English sent airplanes and tanks and armored vehicles and massacred Ibn Saud's bedouins.
They did this to save face. They could not have their puppet being killed or crushed. It would simply make the Brits look weak.
The site of that battle became the border of Jordan and Saudi Arabia:
hence the names, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Basically 2 local dynastic tribal leaders tried to adapt to this European idea of nation-states and took their areas of control and turned them into countries.
So basically what I think he was trying to say in his conclusion was that that form of government was never meant for the Middle East and won't last long.
He was saying that the Europeans underestimated the only unifying factor in Arabia, which was Islam.
They would never have believed that a bunch of wahhabi bedouins could invade the hejaz, or that the muslim brotherhood would be so strong today, or the Afghani mujahedeen, or the shia revolution in Iran...

He also said that it was like Europe in the 5th century
the roman empire crumbled and then Europe spent 1000 years warring against each other trying to find a comfortable solution, and it evolved this idea of secular nation states.
Anyway, I came off with the feeling that the English and the French screwed up everything, and have the blood of millions of deaths on their hands, and that the countries that exist today are sad jokes.
The whole area was part of Greater
Syria for 2 weeks. All the Arabs there united under 1 government right in between Egypt and Iran.
And I think that's how it should end one day.

So to summarize:
Pros:

Good book.
Dense
Well researched

Cons:

As one reviewer mentioned, too euro-centric for a book about the Middle-East.
The part on Ibn Saud taking the Hejaz and naming himself king, for example, was about 2 pages long!
Also, he seems to quickly mention things that were of utmost importance, such as Ibn Saud collecting vast amounts of money from the British. He does not connect the dots here, because what this means is that Ibn Saud would have had little money to pay his troops and to buy weapons if the British had not payed him off as handsomely as they did, and hence, the world would not know a Wahhabi Saudi Kingdom in control of Islam's two holiest cities. And that, is something worth a chapter or two.

I ordered this book from the US and had it shipped to me in Japan. I opened it up and, surprise.... I found that the first 28 pages were missing! They hadn't been torn out, it was simply that the book was printed without them.

How can any publisher of a NYT bestseller fail to ensure that pages 1-28 are included?

I'll review the content of the book later, but I'm not off to a good start. Argh!!! How do I give a publisher a "zero star" rating?

I wish to second Robert Steele's 5-star review of "A Peace to End All Peace", which was posted yesterday. I had ample time to read the book thoroughly, not in the stands at my son's Little League game, some years ago. It's worth a careful and thoughtful reading; no other book I know of sets the stage for understanding the Middle East in the 20th C as conprehensively. And after you finish it, I'd recommend "All the Shah's Men" as the key text for understanding America's embroglio with Iran.

I am forty books behind in actual reading, but I had the pleasure of scanning this book while on the sidelines of my son's football practice, and it is, as so aptly described by the best of the reviews, breathtaking.

The sentence that grabbed me is in the final paragraph, where the author sums up the roots of the Middle Eastern troubles as being directly on the heads of the English in particular, who lied, cheated, and stole without mercy. He says of Loyd George: "His political deviousness and his moral and financial laxness were never forgotten." Would that this were so, for Dick Cheney and George Bush are our Lloyd George.

I have written a full summative review of a book that complement's this author's sensible account, and reading that review before reading this book could be helpful. The other books also support the view that we are our own worst enemy, that there is plenty of money with which to make the world heaven on earth, but rule by secrecy, predatory capitalism, and fascism disguised as democracy has looted the planet and picked the pocket of the individual taxpayer while destroying the middle class. We are repeating history, in part because we have one of the most poorly educated populations with respect to history and global cultures, than ever before. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency has taken to complaining recently that he cannot find enough qualified recruits in our shallow pool of "worldly" talent.

The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State

The key point of the above book is that the Treaty of Westphalia and the creation of nation-states as soverign entities with unrestricted powers within their own borders--borders created by the English and other invasive colonizing powers with the US the most active in the last 200 years--were huge mistakes. We should instead have at least made Indigenous Peoples co-equal, and understood, and respected, tribal boundaries established over centuries. Ignorance and hubris/arrogance combine with greed at the corporate and dictator levels (see Ambassador Palmer's book on "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil" to understand why our White House loves 42 of the 44 dictators on the planet, and Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashies" for why CIA went straight into the business of supporting dictators as proxy bullies). Paul Bremer had it right: the root cause of terrorism is us. See my comment for a note on Chinese Irregular Warfare that just took force off the table as a US option.

See also
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

On the positive side, but Amazon only allows ten active links, see
Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
Barry Carter, Infinite Wealth
C.K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
J. F. Rischard, HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Robert Steele, The New Craft of Intelligence
Robert Steele, The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
Thomas Stewart, Wealth of Knowledge
Alvin Toffler, Revolutionary Wealth
E. O. Wilson, The Future of Life
Medaard Gabel, Seven Billion Billionaires (forthcoming)

I hope this contextual connecting of some dots is viewed as helpful. This is not a "pretend" review!

I am forty books behind in actual reading, but I had the pleasure of scanning this book while on the sidelines of my son's football practice, and it is, as so aptly described by the best of the reviews, breathtaking.

The sentence that grabbed me is in the final paragraph, where the author sums up the roots of the Middle Eastern troubles as being directly on the heads of the English in particular, who lied, cheated, and stole without mercy. He says of Loyd George: "His political deviousness and his moral and financial laxness were never forgotten." Would that this were so, for Dick Cheney and George Bush are our Lloyd George.

I have written a full summative review of a book that complement's this authors erudite message, and reading that review before reaeding this book could be helpful. The other books also support the view that we are our own worst enemy, that there is plenty of money with which to make the world heaven on earth, but rule by secrecy, predatory capitalism, and fascism disguised as democracy has looted the planet and picked the pocket of the individual taxpayer while destroying the middle class. We are repeating history, in part because we have one of the most poorly educated populations with respect to history and global cultures, than ever before. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency has taken to complaining recently that he cannot find enough qualified recruits in our shallow pool of "worldly" talent.

The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State

The key point of the above book is that the Treaty of Westphalia and the creation of nation-states as soverign entities with unrestricted powers within their own borders--borders created by the English and other invasive colonizing power with the US the most active in the last 200 years--were huge mistakes. We should instead have at least make peoples co-equal, and understood, and respected, tribal boundaries established over centuries. Ignorance and hubris/arrogance combine with greed at the corporate and dictator levels (see Ambassador Palmer's book on "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil" to understand why our White House loves 42 of the 44 dictators on the planet, and Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashies" for why CIA went straight into the business of supporting dictators as proxy bullies).

See also
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

On the positive side, but Amazon only allows ten active links, see
Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
Barry Carter, Infinite Wealth
C.K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
J. F. Rischard, HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Robert Steele, The New Craft of Intelligence
Robert Steele, The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
Thomas Stewart, Wealth of Knowledge
Alvin Toffler, Revolutionary Wealth
E. O. Wilson, The Future of Life
Medaard Gabel, Seven Billion Billionaires (forthcoming)

I hope this contextual connecting of some dots is viewed as helpful. This is not a "pretend" review!

I have bought this book after looking at all the 5 star reviews on this site and was aghast when I read it through. The book is not terrrible. It provides an extremely elitist interpretation of history which still teaches many things. The author, aside from several exception, illustrates individuals as caricatures. Does not analyze the cultural social and economical structures any more than skin deep and appears to have very limited access to any knowlegde about the Ottoman empire. Many contentious issues are glossed over. I would not have written this review cause as I said the book is not terrible but it certainly does not deserve all the 5 stars that it got. If you have read real history books, just read the first chapter and you will understand exactly what I mean. If you just want to have some hazy idea about the "Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East" than this book is good for you. Note however that you have only that, a hazy idea.

I agree with all the rave reviews--this book is a "must-read" in order to understand what is going on in the world today. The title refers ironically to the justification that World War I was a war to end all war. The peace that followed the First World War, including the carve-up of the former Ottoman Empire by the Allied powers and encouragement of nationalism by Woodrow Wilson, led to disaster. A good companion for Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly".

This is a well researched, comprehensive narrative on how the middle east was formed, centered on the British side of events, where the most important decisions were taken. Reading these pages, I can only think of the mess that the middle east was in those days, mostly because the major constituents of this region, that is to say Mesopotamia, Arabia and Palestine, had more than one internal player interested in holding part of the dismembered Ottoman Empire, and with the major external players at war trying also to get a piece of the cake and install or retain its influence on this important region, strategically important for its oil resources and geographic location. Added to this scenario was the zionist question, Turkey and its confilcts in central Asia and the internal problems faced by Britain, politically and economically.

Those were very complex times indeed, where the best of British diplomacy was deployed in order to forge peace and stabilize the region according to the situation in those years. Sadly, the settlement of 1922 didn't consider the Kurdish people and the Palestinian Arabs. In spite of all these problems, the book also allowed me to know more about the Arab people and part of its history and religion, its tribes and sects. I cannot say this book is the best in this subject, but certainly a must reading.

This is a well researched, comprehensive narrative on how the middle east was formed, centered on the British side of events, where the most important decisions were taken. Reading these pages, I can only think of the mess that the middle east was in those days, mostly because the major constituents of this region, that is to say Mesopotamia, Arabia and Palestine, had more than one internal player interested in holding part of the dismembered Ottoman Empire, and with the major external players at war trying also to get a piece of the cake and install its influence on this important region, strategically important for its oil resources and geographic location. Added to this scenario was the zionist question, Turkey and its confilcts in central Asia and the internal problems faced by Britain, politically and economically.

Those were very complex times indeed, where the best of British diplomacy was deloyed in order to forge peace and stabilize the region according to the situation in those years. This book also allowed me to know more about the Arab people and part of its history and religion, its tribes and sects. I cannot say this book is the best in this subject, but certainly a must reading.

This is truly a monumental piece of scholarship presented in a lucid and interesting way without sparing detail .
If you liked Paris 1919 this book paints the full picture. A great read.

This may not be the best book ever written about this topic but it is a very good introduction to it for the educated reader, one that details how the machinations of the colonial great powers redrew the map of Middle East in the wake of the cataclysm of the Great War that collapsed the centuries old Ottoman Empire and how the native forces of revolution that arose at that time were mostly suppressed or coopted, with the notable exception of Mustafa Kemal's Turkish movement which is given its due. These events truly created the context of the modern Middle East we confront today from Israel/Palestine to Iraq. This book is not, as some have suggested, a sophmoric political screed at all, but a worthy and nuanced work of researched scholarship that merits the accolades it has received, one that illuminates a critical background to events at the heart of world politics today. Those on a hair trigger to denounce "liberals" should take note of the leading role of Liberal politicians like Asquith and Lloyd-George in the imperial intrigues that are described in this work, to say nothing of Churchill who was a leading member of that party at the time as well.

As far as I can tell from A Peace To End All Peace, the big plan to remake the Middle East after World War I and grant peaceful coexistence to the many varied religions living there was as follows: don't plan to remake the Middle East after World War I and grant peaceful coexistence to the many varied religions living there.

All of Fromkin's book, basically, takes place from the perspective of the French, Russian, and British cabinets, which is either happenstance based on which historical documents were available, or a sustained joke: it takes place in those cabinets because the Middle Easterners themselves had no real role in shaping their own future. Not only did a few Europeans sit down one day and draw lines on a map that they didn't really understand, but they managed to pollute even that level of ignorance with political infighting and diplomatic conspiracy: the British wanted to harm the French, the Soviets (after the 1917 revolution) wanted to strike a blow against British empire, the British wanted to protect their route to India by controlling Afghanistan and Syria, and a hundred other allegiances besides. Only very occasionally did anyone have the vaguest connection with actual Middle Easterners.

Among other major mistakes made by the Western powers, a few stand out:

1. Treating `Arabs' or even `Muslims' as homogeneous groups when in fact there were dozens of sects and families that mutually mistrusted one another. (Imagine installing a Catholic president in the United States and expecting that Lutherans, say, would go along with his rule. See also "Popery".)
2. Deciding to back Hussein and his children, making his son Faisal king of Iraq and Abudllah emir of Transjordan (now Jordan). The British assumed that Hussein had hundreds of thousands of rabid followers, when as it happens he had only a few thousand.
3. Assuming that the Syrians would prefer to cast off the French yoke and put on the British one, rather than desiring a nation of their own. When the Western powers encountered resistance to their rule, they seemed confused about why this was happening.
4. Bargaining over the destiny of the Middle East without really paying attention to what Middle Easterners wanted. See, in particular, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, whereby the British and French secretly agreed on the fate of Syria. The British, at least, seemed convinced that `public opinion,' in the Western sense, didn't make any sense in the Middle East, but Fromkin never really explains what they meant.
5. Assuming that a Western government -- checks and balances, centralized administration and so forth -- made sense in a region that had long been held together tenuously under Ottoman-style administration. (Fromkin's one- or two-page explanation of the Ottoman background is funny and illuminating. I would have liked more pre-history.)
6. Maybe most humorously, if it weren't so tragic and outdated: assuming that Jews were the secret motive force behind everything happening in the world. The Balfour declaration, offering British support for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, was originally conceived to help the British win World War I: give the all-powerful Jews something, and they'll get on your side and help defeat the Germans (whom the Jews, by supposition, controlled). Somehow this existed cheek by jowl alongside rabid anti-Semitism in official Britain, and alongside knowledge of the pogroms that the Jews were trying to escape in Russia. How the British managed to square this particular circle would be a fascinating book on its own.

Charging guns blazing into the Middle East, the British decided to topple the Ottoman Empire rather than prop it up as a block against the Russians -- as they had been doing for at least a century. (Interesting Statistics Department: Fromkin reports that the Russian Empire had been growing at a rate of 50 square miles per day for 400 years.) With World War I plodding along, and the combatants realizing early on that they would gain no territory within Europe, they decided that they had to expand their empires elsewhere. So they set about on the purely bureaucratic job of carving up the Middle East without understanding what they were getting into. So they created a power vacuum, which the locals very quickly filled with their own brand of rule that matched up not at all with what the West had in mind.

Analogies to the present day are, of course, illusory.

This book has been far too overrated in recent years. Talked up by the likes of Hamza Yusuf and others while this is an interesting read it is not the be all and end all.

While it does expose some of the myths of the first world war and the so called 'Arab revolt' which for far too long has been deplicted as almost a struggle against colonial domination (something that has been said as much by many pan-Arabists) from the young Turks (Even though the Sharif of Mecca was a member of the Turkish parliement, had a villa in Istanbul and his was even married to a Turk! Or the equally mythical Arab 'conquest of Damascus' (Which the book points out was carried out by Australian troops who the British asked to withdraw so the Arabs could 'have their day')

The book points out some of the outright racism of many of the British diplomats towards the Arabs in spite of seeing them as allies (should come as no supprise considering the comments made by British diplomats towards Inonu when he went to discuss a peace deal at the end of the Turkish war of independence (see the books of Stanford Shaw for details))

What the book fails to point out however (and much is the same criticism of Fisks books) Turkeys actuall involvement in the Middle East. Turkey is pushed to the side as though it was only a minor player in the Middle East (rather than what it was which was quite possibly the main player) So you will rarely find in any book for example Khayr ad-Din Pashas heroic defense of Medina though there is some mention of Talat Pashas emotional devestation at having to abandon Damascus to what they must have well known was not some 'Arab kingdom' but rather a colonial administrated puppet state.

For the Turks the Middle East were not just 'posessions' but land that contained the holy land of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The homeland of Baghdad and Damascus where the Ummayyad Mosque was and the resting place of many of the Shia Imams and saints such as Abdul Qadir Jilani. To lose the Middle East was to lose the heart and soul of the Ottoman Empire and until this is understood we will alwasy be at a disadvantage in studying Middle Eastern history.

Well written and researched. Tons of information.If you want an understanding of the Arab world and how Europeans caused today problems, read this book. It is not light reading, but it's worth the effort.

Fabulous! This book is essential to understanding the middle east today and how it became that way (and how hard it will be to fix it).

This book is about British policy and ambitions in the Middle East more than about the Middle East itself. It provides a compelling argument that political and tactical mistakes (and greed) by the Western powers are to blame for some of the problems in the region today. David Fromkin is not a conventional academic historian. He was a lawyer for many years before becoming a professor, hence his natural focus on political negotiations, diplomatic wrangling, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, machinations, power plays, disputes among government factions, etc. He does an excellent job of laying all this out.

Fromkin writes in an engaging style and his clear organization makes this long book fairly easy to read. The only part that disappointed me was the discussion of Central Asia, which is vague and incomplete. Fromkin does not identify the ethnicity/nationality of the players involved. He inaccurately and collectively refers to the peoples of this region as "Turkish speakers"--in fact most (but not all) speak Turkic languages, related but not identical to Turkish. For readers not familiar with Central Asia, it would have been helpful to note the Soviet republics (and now independent nations--Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) established soon after the episode with Enver Pasha and the Basmachi that Fromkin discusses. A more detailed map could have been included. It would have been interesting to compare Soviet and British policy in the creation of republics or nation-states but this is not touched on. As a location of important oil and gas reserves, Central Asia is once again of strategic interest to regional and world powers (including the U.S.). That Fromkin neglects to provide essential background information on the region is a serious flaw, and looks like a careless oversight. This part of the book could have been better researched. Fromkin is not a Middle East or Central Asia scholar per se, and does not appear to read the languages of the region. There are no Arabic, Turkish (or, also relevant, Russian or German) sources in his bibliography.

Fromkin's archival research has been mostly in British diplomacy and Zionism, and this is where his book is most informative. He has obviously combed through an enormous amount of material. Interested readers will need to look elsewhere for the perspective of the Middle Eastern peoples themselves, and may disagree with Fromkin's interpretations of events, but will gain much from the abundant factual material presented here. We learn, sadly, how very much history repeats itself.

I purchased this book several years ago. With the events of the past 30 years in the Middle East, I decided to read it , in hopes of understanding the recent history of the area. Once I started, I could not put the book down. It's well written and shows little bias. I highly recommend it to those who have the same question.

I agree 100% with all the other reviewers. This is a well written, informative book, that everyone who wants to have an informed opinion about the middle east should read.

On chapter 31 (The New World, p.259) there is a quote from a speech given by T. Woodrow Wilson (then president of the US)on the 4th of July 1918, that caught my attention:

"The settlement of every question, whether of territory or sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own influence or mastery"

This speech outlined the Four Ends for which the US and its allies were supposedly fighting. These Four Ends outlined the discrepancies between American and European post war goals. The allies were imperialist countries, and the US were not.

No wonder John M. Keynes wrote "When president Wilson left Washington he enjoyed a prestige and moral influence throughout the world unequaled in history" (chapter 41, p.390). Maybe president Wilson was a bit naive, but the US entered the war with lofty ideals.

Makes you wonder what happened to those ideals, doesn't it?

Excellent book. Don't hesitate, buy it NOW.

A Peace to End All Peace is a masterpiece that picks up where Guns of August leaves off. The author threads together the wide-ranging people, places and events that reshaped the Middle East following World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The book traces the mostly failed attempts by colonialists, primarily British and French, to transform Asian cultures into Western style democracies with seemingly randomly defined national borders without regard to cultural differences separating the people. The primary motives: oil, power and military presence, as they remain today. This book shows that ethnocentric Westerners have learned little about the Middle East since then. This mangled shaping and reshaping of the region continues today, spearheaded by the American colonial foray into Iraq by dint of war that may soon spread overtly to surrounding countries. A Peace to End All Peace demonstrates an old adage: If we cannot learn from our past mistakes, we are bound to repeat them.

This book was a required reading for a class I took on the modern Middle East. It is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read. I have recommended this book to almost everyone I know, and so far nobody has spoken poorly about it, if I could I would recommend it to President Bush. However, have no doubt it is a tough read, but it is well worth the work. Absolutely essential for anyone who want to understand what, who and why the Middle East is what it is.

This book explains it all. The Mid-East mess is sorted out in easy steps, Artificial Country by Artificial Copuntry. This division, each chapter dealing with one country for each of the half a dozen years makes for easy reference.
I have read this "easy read" twice and now frequently refresh my failing memory by opening it.
Bernard Lewis's " What Went Wrong" may be more philosophical, but this is unalloyed reality.
" A Peace to End all Peace" should be rquired reading in every school which purports to study the subject.
It is a shame President Bush didn't read it before 9/12/03, the day after 9/11.
I sent these two copies to learned friends and you should too.
Donovan Jacobs

Its very popular and easy to blame the present mess in Iraq and the Middle East on George Bush and Tony Blair. Not that those two haven't thrown gasoline on a fire but the mess was made long before they took an interest.
David Fromkin takes us back to the beginning at the end of World War One when just for a moment all things, including a real peace seemed possible. It wasn't to be however. The system of states as we know it in the Middle East was created by Europeans around 1922 as a way to extend their empires, to carve up the fallen Ottoman Empire and establish dominance as they had done with other countries after previous wars. The process of Middle Eastern statehood is a story involving Britain, France, Russia, Greece, and on the fringes, America. The road is littered with misinformation and lies on all sides; disasterous and stupid assumptions and unwarrented mistakes, egos, and naked imperialism.
Given the lack of interest of Turkey in continuing to ride herd of this region, a thankless task but one she carried off pretty well, all things considered,its hard to see how letting the Arabs settled their own affairs by force would not have been preferable to the setting up of the phony nations that make up the middle east today.
So who are the bad guys in this story? Well there's plenty to go around but three stand out - Hussein bin Ali, the self proclaimed "king of all Arabs" an inverterate conniver and liar, the egotistical and greedy French and the lying double dealing and even more greedy British. Of the three the British have the most to answer for yet somehow they have escaped almost any blame in the public consciousness.
The war the Americans are fighting now in Iraq, regardless of how you think we got there, is a war to make right what the British, more than any other single party, broke long ago.

This is the essential and mandatory reading for anyone interested in understanding the political, social, economical, and ethnographic problems of the Middle East. A creation of the post WW1 powers that thoroughly ignored the conditions of this critical area, it could only be expected that the current explosive situation will ensue. The chapter on Iraq is illuminating.

This is the essential and mandatory reading for anyone interested in understanding the political, social, economical, and ethnographic problems of the Middle East. A creation of the post WW1 powers that thoroughly ignored the conditions of this critical area, it could only be expected that the current explosive situation will ensue. The chapter on Iraq is illuminating.

World War I & the fall of the Ottoman Empire are described in great detail with emphasis on the role of Great Britain. The author offers great insight into the inner workings of the British government vis a vis international diplomacy & intrigue. He lends us great understanding of what was going on in the governments of the great powers of the time. The book does not, however, give us any insight into the politics of the inhabitants of the Middle East, the relationships among Arabs (both Christian & Muslim), Jews, & non-Arab Muslims who had coexisted in the region under Ottoman rule. Ths book is a great beginning.

I would liken reading this book to starting with a few small unconnected sections of a jigsaw puzzle, and this work drops in all the pieces in beween to reveal the picture.

There's so much to like about this book.
1) The format. He breaks major sections into compact packages that are easy to read and keep the players in focus. Short chapters of history are interspersed with micro-history/background material. These provide enough information for understanding without getting bogged down. This is especially valuable for those who don't know a Hohenzollern from a holy roller but need to in order to comprehend the world being undone.

2) Having maps and photos - just enough to help visualize people and events.

3) The "who's who" reference list was a great idea that helps keep important but unfamiliar players straight.

4) It inspired vigorous discussion in our family and made us want to do more research. I appreciated his extensive bibliography.

5) Readability! It's a masterwork that is a welcome relief from academic pedantry. Mr. Meyer makes even complex subjects easy to understand and a pleasure to read.

It's amazing how much he packs into 700 pages. You will have a vastly greater understanding of what the world was that became "undone" by this war, how it fell apart and implications for future generations. In the end you're faced with the inevitable reality of what a few can do to screw it up for everyone. Leadership should be taken seriously. Both what people do and what they refrain from doing matter. When history is well done it's also a great character study, and this book does not disappoint. Highly recommended.

I heartily agree with the reviewer who recommended bookending this work with The Guns of August and Paris 1919: Six Months that changed the World. They show that mediocrity on the battlefield was more than matched by mediocrity in diplomatic circles - all compounded by unmerited opinions of one's abilities.

Also recommend: David Fromkin's excellent A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.

To state the obvious, there is no small amount of irony in the title of this book. As David Fromkin tells us, when the Middle East settlement, or settlements rather, of 1922 were imposed by European Powers - particularly Britain - there were so many misunderstandings and false assumptions on all sides that the future promised many things, peace not being one of them.

The year 1922 was a watershed year for the Middle East. The modern states of Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Transjordania (now Jordan) came into being as a result of treaties that were enacted during this fateful year. Calling them modern states is a misnomer, it was as an Eygptian intellectual once said, they were "tribes with flags." Fromkin's chronicle is about how European powers partitioned the former Ottoman Empire creating dependent states and puppet regimes while ignoring the peoples of the Middle East.

The story begins in 1913 when the Ottoman Turks were looking for an ally due to their military weakness and geographical vulnerability. They had originally sought Britain as an ally but were rebuffed. At the outbreak of World War I, the British mistakenly thought that the Germans had sought an alliance with Turkey. Actually it was the other way around. But it was British paranoia that forced them into each others arms. On the chessboard of the Great Game, the Germans and the Turks were now allies against the British, French, and Russians. And when the Russians perceived to have problems on their German-Turkish front, they - the Russians - implored the British to attack Turkey, which they did.

British attacks on the Ottoman Empire were disastrous and turned out to involve them in a long, drawn-out entanglement in the Middle East. At the end of World War I when the Turks lost control of their imperial possesions, the British tried to set up Hussein as a "Pope" of Islam to control Arabia. But this created more problems than it solved. By 1922, the British installed Hussein's son Feisal in Iraq and his other son Abdullah in Syria. Ibn Saud was given control of Mecca, Medina and the remainder of what is now Saudi Arabia.

Fromkin tells his story mostly from a British point of view; other views are duly taken into account but his source materials are primarily in English. He portrays Winston Churchill as a central figure in these events. Indeed, Churchill was in charge of the British Navy when they wrongly attacked Turkey and forced them to the German side. After a series of defeats, the British were forced to retreat in 1915. This fiasco ended Churchill's political career - many thought permanently - as well as the premiership of Herbert Asquith. However, in 1921, Churchill was resurrected as head of Middle Eastern affairs under Prime Minister Lloyd Gearge. During the so-called peace settlements of 1922, Churchill was present at creation and thus greatly responsible for the configuration of the modern Middle East.

Churchill's legacy in the Middle East is controversial to say the least. He supported the Balfour Declaration which created a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and at the same time he assured the Palestinian Arabs that Jews in Palestine would be good for the Arabs and good for the world. He was actually serious and optimistic when he was saying this. So much for a peace to end all peace.

This is one of the best accounts of the making of the modern Middle East I've ever read.

David Fromkin's "Peace to End All Peace" is simultaneously a comprehensive and very flawed work. Many of the reasons for it being one can be found in the other.

Fromkin attempts to examine how the modern Middle East (extending as far as Afghanistan and some sections of Central Asia) was created during and after the First World War. Obviously, in order to do this, the fall of the Ottoman Empire in that war must be considered.
This is where Fromkin's unusual methodology comes into play. Focusing on the European political machinations to resolve the "Eastern Question" in their favour, the sorry tale becomes one more of Churchill and TE Lawrence than of the Arabs and Turks who were also involved in the process. Admittedly, it was the Europeans who wielded the whip hand in deciding just where the borders were to be drawn, but reducing key figures such as the CUP Triumvirate in the dying Ottoman Empire (and Kemal Ataturk in Turkey immediately thereafter) to the status of supporting players ultimately skews the focus of the book too much.

Never let it be said that this is a simple story to retell. A complex web of national and personal political interests in both Europe and the Middle East combined to make the region what it is today, and any study of all of these will be faced with the need for convoluted explanations. The problem that Fromkin has, however, is that he does not make these very well at all.
The story is told in a roughly chronological manner, which means that we jump from place to place and meet a bewildering array of characters. Ultimately, the only real result is confusion on the part of the reader, who is constantly flipping backwards to see who the latest figure to make an appearance actually is.

Additionally, Fromkin frequently confuses his readers with references to geographical features which are not well-shown on the maps provided. Indeed, one map (showing Enver Pasha's advance on Baku and his campaigns in Central Asia) is laughable in the extreme. The legend explains that the direction of the arrows is the direction of the various advances - which would be significantly more useful were the arrows in fact arrows, and not equilateral triagles.

Where Fromkin does well, however, is in his use of purely European sources. It is perhaps unusual to say this of a book intending to tell the story of the modern Middle East, but I have considerable doubts about the depth of his research into the Middle Eastern aspects of the events in question. In terms of Europe, however, his research seems to cover the major bases of exactly what the key figures believed and did.

Ultimately, "A Peace to End All Peace" is a difficult and not particularly rewarding work. A diplomatic history of Europe during the Great War can be written much better than this, and a history of the development of the Middle East following that conflict already has been (the chapters in Margaret Attwood's "The Peacemakers" or William Cleveland's "Modern Middle East" both easily outshine this).

This book describes the experiences of Britain and France in the Middle East during and after WWI. It does much to explain why "Old Europe" and the US are regarded with so much suspicion in the Middle East. It should make us aware of the dangers of colonialism and exploitation in the Middle East. It points out that the costs of maintaining a colonial regime far outweigh the benefits.

I would suggest reading this book along with Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival." The two books make it clear that we are on a disastrous course in the Middle East and in much of the rest of the world.

This book describes the experiences of Britain and France in the Middle East during and after WWI. It does much to explain why "Old Europe" and the US are regarded with so much suspicion in the Middle East. It should make us aware of the dangers of colonialism and exploitation in the Middle East. It points out that the costs of maintaining a colonial regime far outweigh the benefits.

I would suggest reading this book along with Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival." The two books make it clear that we are on a disastrous course in the Middle East and in much of the rest of the world.

David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace" is a wondefully researched and well-written account that covers the political creation of the modern Middle East from the period starting during World War I and the years immediately subsequent to it. Although Fromkin tackles the project in a somewhat predictable, chronological manner, his book is supremely researched and engaging thanks in part to the book's prescient subject matter.

Fromkin intertwines the events of World War I as they specifically related to the Ottoman Empire and the rest of the geographic Middle East with a more comprehensive War history. Specifically, the author describes and explains the political machinations and intellectual movtivations on the part of the Allied leaders (specifically the British) who oversaw the prosecution of the War. For example, the book contains a detailed account of how and why the Ottoman Empire ultimately became involved in the War on the side of Germany, thus leading to the Empire's overthrow and the subsequent contrived fracturing of the Middle East. The book does a fantastic job of exposing the truth and debunking myths associated with controversial aspects of the war. In doing so, Fromkin paints a panoramic picture and is equally contemptuous when describing the motivations of all parties involved.

Though the book is both intensely well researched and covers a topic concededly enormous, there were certain elements of the topic the book espouses to cover that could and should have garnered more attention. For example, an obvious and extremely important movement related to the modern geo-politics of the region was the birth of Zionism in the late-1800's and its rise during World War I. This topic was casually glossed over by Fromkin. As is well known, British leaders during the period concluded that promoting Palestine as a homeland for the Jews scattered throughout the world, and especially in oppressive regions such as Russia, would generate support for the Allies thus hastening a more rapid conclusion to the War. Furthermore, the British believed that if Palestine could effectively be established as the homeland for the Jews, British influence would form an unbroken chain between Eastern Africa and India. While Fromkin repeatedly discusses this latter thesis, he fails to go into any depth regarding the more subtle motivations for promoting Zionism as espoused by Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and others who steadfastly supported the cause of the Jews.

Overall, David Fromkin has written a fantastic account and has demonstrated both a supreme grasp of the subject and impeccably sharp analysis. As stated above, however, the topic is much too expansive for each aspect of the book's subject to be appropriately covered in only 550+ pages.

This book is actual history. There is little agenda or argument that does not rise directly out of the facts presented. Only the introduction and the conclusion put forth speculation as to cause and effect. Given that, this book is likely too detailed for many, but the personalities of Churchill, Lloyd George, Ener, Talaat, Kitchener, Sykes, T.E. Lawrence are drawn through their documented action, and the history really moves. It's a fascinating story and essential as the details of WWI are not as clearly understood as are those of WWII. However, this book seems to suggest the opposite of its stated case. It turns out that the Middle East lands were largely ignored prior to WWI, and without the knowledge of or appetite for oil, it is easy to understand why.

If nationalism caused problems, it is more due to the ability to organize large war machines rather than by the fact that the lines were poorly drawn. It is fascinating the way that racism and biggotry shaped European policy, but it is tough to say that it caused any real ill effects that would not have been caused by an "Enlightened" 21st century government.

I would put forth that a nation's lines cannot be drawn. They are a result of thousands of years of war and culture. There were no real nations in the Middle East before this period, perhaps kingdoms and tribes. We are still in the period of those nations forming, perhaps for centuries. The new element is the oil, but it will probably be gone before the lines become permanent.

Oh, great book, gives you an idea of what research can achieve.

This book is actual history. There is little agenda or argument that does not rise directly out of the facts presented. Only the introduction and the conclusion put forth speculation as to cause and effect. Given that, this book is likely too detailed for many, but the personalities of Churchill, Lloyd George, Ener, Talaat, Kitchener, Sykes, T.E. Lawrence are drawn through their documented action, and the history really moves. It's a fascinating story and essential as the details of WWI are not as clearly understood as are those of WWII. However, this book seems to suggest the opposite of its stated case. It turns out that the Middle East lands were largely ignored prior to WWI, and without the knowledge of or appetite for oil, it is easy to understand why.

If nationalism caused problems, it is more due to the ability to organize large war machines rather than by the fact that the lines were poorly drawn. It is fascinating the way that racism and biggotry shaped European policy, but it is tough to say that it caused any real ill effects that would not have been caused by an "Enlightened" 21st century government.

I would put forth that a nation's lines cannot be drawn. They are a result of thousands of years of war and culture. There were no real nations in the Middle East before this period, perhaps kingdoms and tribes. We are still in the period of those nations forming, perhaps for centuries. The new element is the oil, but it will probably be gone before the lines become permanent.

Oh, great book, gives you an idea of what research can achieve.

David Fromkin's book is generally regarded as the definitive and standard account of the creation of the modern Middle East. Fromkin's thesis is that European policy toward the Middle East between 1914 and 1922 created the basis for the chaos that exists there today. As Fromkin states on p. 17, "It was an era in which Middle Eastern countries and frontiers were fabricated in Europe."

Fromkin spent ten years on this dense work, which includes massive documentation. Throughout the book the author consistently argues that the conflicts that plague the region today are mainly due to the decisions made (eighty years ago) by bumbling European politicos and bureaucrats who had scarce knowledge of the region.

However Fromkin's conclusions are all based on like-minded European sources. As other reviewers have noted there is some doubt about his depth of research into the Middle Eastern aspects of events. Points of view of local Middle Eastern actors during this turbulent period are rarely mentioned. Fromkin expounds the "Western Guilt" point of view: the rapacious Europeans were out to carve up the fallen Ottoman Empire to expand their empires. And the Middle Easterners just stood by as hapless victims of this Western greed.

I gave this book four stars because although I entirely disagree I believe Fromkin has done all that can be done to present the orthodox view of the making of the modern Middle East. He has made a monumental contribution to the liberal culture of "Western guilt" that entraps so many thinkers today.

But Fromkin presented only one side of the debate on this subject. It took ten more years before a revisionist interpretation of the historic period was published in 1999: "Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923" by Professors Efraim and Inari Karsh. Drawing on a wide range of original sources, the Karshes (husband and wife) effectively rebut Fromkin's thesis in a scholarly tour-de-force. (The Karshes even describe Fromkin's standard history as a "caricature" [p. 351]).

"Empires of the Sand" argues that Middle Easterners "were not hapless victims of predatory imperial powers but active participants in the restructuring of their region." "Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate. Great-power influences, however potent, have played a secondary role, constituting neither the primary force behind the region's political development nor the main cause of its notorious volatility."

I recommend reading Fromkin if you want to know the standard, but wrong-headed version of this debate. But if you want to clear your mind of the "Western guilt" syndrome and know the whole story, I recommend the Karshes' book.

This is not a book for the general reader. It's too long, too detailed, and it requires too much knowledge of history, geography and politics. I give it two stars because Fromkin has labored mightily to produce an argument about the most volatile, yet from the West's perspective, strategic region in the world.

But what is Fromkin's argument? It almost becomes lost in his mass of detail. As I understand it, Fromkin blames the unrest and violence in the Middle East on the last gasp imperial adventure of the West, especially England and France, when these powers drew lines on the map making nation-states out of what had been sprawling provinces of the Ottoman Empire. According to Fromkin's thesis the people to blame for the problems of the Middle East since about 1920 are basically the petty bureaucrats (and almost everyone else in every office in France and England) because these lines on the map created "nations" and hence, "national strife" in the Arab lands.

This is a wrong-headed conclusion, for all of Fromkin's exhaustive scholarship. The reason there was a relatively stable Middle East prior to WWI is that the Crown of The Ottoman Empire was so far away and so ineffective that it left the various Arab clans to live in their own obscure world of clan competition and violence. For hundreds of years before 1920 time stood still in the Arab world as the Arabs sliced each others throats out on the desert.

Then when Turkey aligned itself with Germany and lost its Crown lands in WWI, The Middle East was wrenched into the conflicts and clashes of modernity. And with the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia followed close by WWII The Middle East was destined to be a "hot spot." The really serious troubles in The Middle East began after WWII and are related to oil, autocracy and Islam, not lines on a map. And due to its reliance on Middle East oil, the destiny of the modern West is inextricably intertwined with that of the backward Middle East.

This is not a book for the general reader. It's too long, too detailed, and it requires too much knowledge of history, geography and politics. I give it two stars because Fromkin has labored mightily to produce an argument about the most volatile, yet from the West's perspective, strategic region in the world.

But what is Fromkin's argument? It almost becomes lost in his mass of detail. As I understand it, Fromkin blames the unrest and violence in the Middle East on the last gasp imperial adventure of the West, especially England and France, when these powers drew lines on the map making nation-states out of what had been sprawling provinces of the Ottoman Empire. According to Fromkin's thesis the people to blame for the problems of the Middle East since about 1920 are basically the petty bureaucrats (and almost everyone else in every office in France and England) because these lines on the map created "nations" and hence, "national strife" in the Arab lands.

This is a wrong-headed conclusion, for all of Fromkin's exhustive scholarship. The reason there was a relatively stable Middle East prior to WWI is that the Crown of The Ottoman Empire was so far away and so ineffective that it left the various Arab clans to live in their own world of clan competition and violence. For hundreds of years time stood still in the Arab world as the Arabs sliced each others throats out on the desert.

Then when Turkey aligned itself with Germany and lost its Crown lands in WWI, The Middle East was wrenched into the conflicts and clashes of modernity. And with the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia followed close by WWII The Middle East was destined to be a "hot spot." The really serious troubles in The Middle East began after WWII and are related to oil and Islam,