Power Faith and Fantasy
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The first comprehensive history of America's military, political, and intellectual involvement in the Middle East from George Washington to George W. Bush.
"If you think America's entanglement in the Middle East began with Roosevelt and Truman, Michael Oren's deeply researched and brilliantly written history will be a revelation to you, as it was to me. With its cast of fascinating characters - earnest missionaries, maverick converts, wide-eyed tourists and even a nineteenth-century George Bush - Power, Faith and Fantasy is not only a terrific read, it is also proof that you don't really understand an issue until you know its history." - Niall Ferguson, author of Colossus and The War of the World
In November 2002, Shalem senior fellow Michael Oren began work on Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present. It's the first book to tell the history of the United States' involvement in the region from the Founding Fathers to the present day in one volume. From the moment of its inception, Oren argues that the United States has been engaged in combating mortal threats from the region, and that in spite of these dangers, America has often worked to bring freedom to the region and enhance the life of its peoples.
As the citizens of many countries across the globe are continually asked to make fateful decisions about their country's involvement in the Middle East - decisions that will profoundly affect the future, this book provides an extraordinary historical context to examine the American understanding of that role.
Power, Faith, and Fantasy demonstrates that the roots of American engagement run much deeper than the Suez crisis or even the creation of the State of Israel. The United States actually fought its first international war against Arabic-speaking Muslims, and the region was so important at the turn of the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson declared the Middle East to be his main overseas concern. Not only did George Washington have a policy on the region, but also early conflicts in the Middle East played a critical role in shaping of the American Constitution. Moreover, the great icons of American literature and culture, including Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, took fundamental inspiration from this seemingly strange and alien land. Despite this legacy, most Americans remain largely ignorant of the ways the country has been continuously intertwined with the region for over two centuries.
With the full resources and support of The Shalem Center, Oren has drawn on government documents, thousands of classified papers, and the memoirs of merchants, missionaries, and travelers, as well as personal correspondence. He seeks to fill this gap in the collective knowledge by reconstructing the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with an alluring but often hostile region. With "a novelist's flair" (Wall Street Journal, on Six Days of War), Oren tells the remarkable stories of those Americans, whether drawn by the temptation of adventure, glory, profit, or the missionary ideal, who journeyed to the Middle East to try and modernize, convert, organize, and learn from its peoples. Through these narratives - including such remarkable figures as John Ledyard, the first American to journey to the Middle Easy, and Mark Twain, whose memoirs of his travels helped launch his career - Oren displays the myriad of ways in which we have impacted the region and, in many respects, how we have been unalterably changed in the process.
With startling revelations about a broad pageant of historical characters - from early American explorers who probed the sources of Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, Oren's new book will prove the definitive volume on this long and tortuous history. Masterfully narrated and compellingly told, and illustrated with over 70 images, portraits, and maps, Power, Faith and Fantasy is deeply original work by one of our finest historians and is indispensable for anyone interested in understanding the roots of America's Middle East involvement today.
About the Author: Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center. He holds degrees in Middle East history from Columbia University and Princeton University and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University and Yale University. His last book, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East was a New York Times best-seller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Oren lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.
More early praise for Power, Faith, And Fantasy: "A landmark achievement. This is an absolutely vital work that will change the way Americans look at their role in the Middle East and beyond. The story is riveting and the research encyclopedic." - Walter Russell Mead, Council on Foreign Relations
"Michael Oren's Power, Faith, and Fantasy fills a real need. Americans have been involved in the Middle East throughout their history, but no one until Oren has documented that involvement so thoroughly and so vividly. Highly recommended." - John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
Book facts: Title: Power, Faith, and Fantasy Author: Michael B. Oren Publisher: W.W.Norton and Company Publication date: January 15, 2007 ISBN: 0-393-05826-3 Price: $35.00
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