A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
by David Fromkin
Book #28: 3rd Quarter 2006 (July, August & September)

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Powells.com
In a famous line toward the end of David Lean's magnificent Lawrence of Arabia, Prince Faisal tells Lawrence, "Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men, courage and hope for the future. Then, old men make peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men, mistrust and caution. It must be so." It's a great line. Too bad it isn't accurate. In the negotiations that remapped the Middle East after World War I, arrogance and ignorance played a far greater role than caution and mistrust. And, these decisions have proven disastrous. For decades, the Middle East has been a major source of violence and political discord in the world. In this classic work, first published in 1989, David Fromkin demonstrates that the conflicts that unsettle the region today are largely a result of the ill-considered decisions — many quite arbitrary — made more than eighty years ago by Europeans who had little understanding or concern for the region. Today, with the Middle East once again the focal point of world conflict, it's hard not to wonder if maybe Hegel wasn't right when he said that what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. If he's to be proven wrong, it will be the result of excellent scholars like Fromkin, and indispensable books like A Peace to End All Peace. Farley, Powells.com

The Publisher
The critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling account of how the modern Middle East came into being after World War I, and why it is in upheaval today.

The Middle East has long been a battleground of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and dynasties. All of these conflicts — including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis that have flared up yet again — stem from its political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed upon the region by the Allies after the First World War.

In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography and politics of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when everything — even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism — seemed possible, Fromkin raises questions about what might have been done differently and answers questions about why things were done as they were. The current battle for a Palestinian homeland has its roots in these events of eighty-five years ago.