An important, if adulatory, reassessment of America’s relationship with the Middle East during the 1940s and ’50s.
A historian examines U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in the decade after World War II.
Chenault, a former military officer and Fulbright Scholar with a doctorate in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is uniquely qualified to reassess the mid-20th-century history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. While focusing attention on Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, his book also contends that a third figure—Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright—was also responsible for shaping U.S. policy in the region. Though the story of Cold War involvement in the Middle East is well-trod terrain, this book brings important revisions to the standard historical narrative. For instance, many scholars agree that the Truman Doctrine was singularly concentrated on Greece and Turkey, but Chenault suggests a third locale—Palestine—is also central to understanding the policy. Moreover, with advanced knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew, Chenault uncovered translation errors made by State Department officials, whose translations of letters to U.S. officials by Arab leaders left out important linguistic nuances that gave U.S. policymakers inaccurate information. His expertise in Middle Eastern languages also affords Chenault the ability to emphasize Arab perspectives often lacking in studies of U.S. policy. His research thus not only consults the archival materials of Truman, Eisenhower, and Fulbright, but also Egyptian and Palestinian daily newspapers al-Ahraam and al-Quds. Despite its fresh insights, cynics of U.S. foreign policy, such as those who view American Cold War strategies through a neocolonial lens, may take issue with the hagiographic tone; Truman, Eisenhower, and Fulbright are praised as men of “true greatness” with “abounding courage.” Even if one disagrees with its pro-American conclusions, the book is remarkably readable for its coverage of the intricacies of Middle Eastern and Cold War diplomacy. A wealth of photographs, charts, and reprints of memos, speeches, and other primary source documents add to the reading experience.
An important, if adulatory, reassessment of America’s relationship with the Middle East during the 1940s and ’50s.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4808-8304-8
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
HISTORY | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD
From veteran British popular historian Johnson, an overly exhaustive account of the vigorous and violent growth of several small British colonies into the modern American nation. Although Johnson (The Birth of the Modern, 1991, etc.) purports to present the history of the "American people," his account has an undeniably British orientation; No details can be found here of the cultures of pre-European inhabitants of North America or the history of areas not originally settled by British colonists, such as Louisiana or the Southwest. Johnson divides his account into eight periods, of which some dates seem dubious (one might question dating America's career as a superpower to 1929, the first year of the Great Depression). More troubling, though understandable in a book of this encyclopedic scope, are the author's omissions and occasionally provocative assertions. In his account of the Civil War period, for instance, Johnson fails to discuss the militarily significant Western War, and he asserts, contrary to most accounts and without much apparent authority, that Abraham Lincoln didn't love his wife and didn't like Secretary of State Seward. Johnson traces not only the military, but also the political, social, and cultural history of America. He treats such disparate topics as the poetry of Walt Whitman, the developing role of women in American society, the growth of vast business combinations in the early 20th century, immigration and urbanization, the Vietnam War, and the 1973-74 "putsch against the Executive" (which is what Johnson calls the Watergate scandal). He editorializes on virtually every subject, sometimes controversially. Noting the many problems faced by modern America, Johnson concludes nonetheless that "the story of America is essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence." A vast tour-de-force of research and writing. Nonetheless, Johnson tries to do too much here, and the overall result is as much of a labor to read as it must have been to write.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-016836-6
Page Count: 944
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
A well-rendered cowboy tale that fleshes out a larger history of the Old West.
The life of a Texas cowboy who ranged the wild frontier paints a broader picture of bygone times in the American West.
Charlie Siringo (1855-1928) herded cattle and drove livestock to slaughter, learning his cowboy skills from the age of 12. In this lively and detailed account, Ward, author of The Lost Detective and Dark Harbor, creates “a portrait of the American West through which he traveled as such a compelling witness—from the birth of the cattle trail and railroad cow town to the violence of the mining wars and the Wild Bunch’s long last ride.” Siringo captured the era in what is considered to be the first cowboy autobiography, A Texas Cowboy; or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (1885), "a work of celebration and mourning for the raucous cowboy life that was ending." Ward devotes just as many chapters to Siringo's later career as a detective, going undercover "to track, befriend and betray" criminals ranging from anarchist bombers to Butch Cassidy. The author also recounts the tangled publishing history of Siringo's memoir A Cowboy Detective (1912), its editions repeatedly quashed due to nondisclosure agreements with the agency that employed him. Ward's consideration of his subject as a working cowboy quickly broadens into that of Siringo as a literary figure whose many books included a life of Billy the Kid, whom he knew well. Siringo was also well appreciated as a "font of authenticity" on cowboy lore during his work as a consultant on Western films in Hollywood in his later years. Illustrations, vintage photos, and maps throughout the text add atmosphere and context to this stirring, multivaried life. If Ward doesn't quite prove that Siringo helped create the foundations of the literature of the American West, he shows that this original cowboy certainly lived out the most fertile period of that time and place.
A well-rendered cowboy tale that fleshes out a larger history of the Old West.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802162083
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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