The Desert War That Remade the Middle East. He was a short, blond Oxford graduate who spoke Arabic, could ride a camel for days across scorching desert, and possessed one of the most restless and self-dramatizing minds of his era. T.E. Lawrence's involvement in the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918 produced one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War — and one of the most consequential for the world we live in today. This book tells the full story of Lawrence and the Arab Revolt: the guerrilla campaign against the Hejaz Railway that pinned down Ottoman forces, the epic march across the Nefud Desert to take Aqaba, the partnership with General Allenby that drove the Ottomans from Palestine, and the final triumph of Arab entry into Damascus. But it also tells the darker story: the Sykes-Picot Agreement that secretly divided the Arab world between Britain and France, the betrayal of the promises made to Sharif Hussein, and the borders drawn on European maps that have fueled conflict across the Middle East for more than a century. Equal parts military history, biography, and geopolitical analysis, this is the essential account of a war within a war — and of the moment when the modern Middle East was born.
The Desert War That Remade the Middle East. He was a short, blond Oxford graduate who spoke Arabic, could ride a camel for days across scorching desert, and possessed one of the most restless and self-dramatizing minds of his era. T.E. Lawrence's involvement in the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918 produc...