Comments on: What I’m Reading

By: lirelou

lirelou — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 06:12:44 +0000

I wsa fortunate enough to inherit the T.E. Lawrence book in its original version (entitled; Colonel Lawrence) from my aunt. Of interest, note that it was the Arab Bureau’s desire to keep the British from sending two infantry brigades to Jiddah that sparked Lawrence’s original mission to Prince Feisal. As I recall, the (1916) assessment of T.E. and the Arab Bureau was that the presence of infidels on Arab soil would spur the majority of the population to switch their allegience to the Turks, who could posture as the protectors of the hld places, in that they were keeping infidels out of the holy land.

By: CTDeLude

CTDeLude — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:41:59 +0000

Just a note, most children nowadays aren’t learning about the European theater during WW1. In fact they’re really not learning about WW1 at all. Least that’s how it is in the public school system now. You’d have to take a specific history course in college to learn anything in detail I’d imagine.

By: Younghusband

Younghusband — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:57:55 +0000

By the way, today is the 70th anniversary of the release of The Hobbit.

By: Younghusband

Younghusband — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:42:48 +0000

Strategy is one of the books on my post-thesis pile. Now I am working my way through Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security.

By: strategist

strategist — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:15:19 +0000

I’ll be interested to hear your view on Liddell Hart’s book. I’ve haven’t read his autobiography of Lawrence, but have long admired Strategy: The Indirect Approach. Alex Danchev wrote a very good biography of LH, Alchemist of War.

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:59:26 +0000

I recently finished The River War, which is available full text online. It is a really brilliant book. Kaplan's praise of the book is wholly merited. I have not read the Hart or Hopkirk books, but I must say that a perusal of Amazon shows Hopkirk as very promising. Nonetheless, on Hopkirk's theme of a German plot to create a "fire in the East" amongst Britain's Muslim subjects, we must of course mention John Buchan's Greenmantle. Supposedly Buchan based his character who could pass amongst the Arabs as a native on a chap named Aubrey Herbert, the subject of a book called The Man Who Was Greenmantle. Herbert sounds like a candidate for the Coming Anarchy Pantheon of Victorian/Edwardian adventurers.