THE CAULDRON

The author of Jerusalem: The Biography (2011) surveys epochal turbulence in a contested region.

Historian Montefiore’s ambitious effort to chronicle Middle Eastern life since 1900 is learned, clear-eyed, and unavoidably diffuse. His prodigious research suggests that it is “the only region on earth today that is becoming less and less diverse and tolerant, not more so.” This is due in significant measure to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, an event as impactful as the French and Russian Revolutions, he contends. The book’s first third covers the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, the two world wars, massacres, colonization and foreign invasions, the birth of new states, and the dawning of the “age of oil.” Montefiore’s chronological narrative hopscotches from one capital to another. In a representative section, two pages on Egypt are followed by two on Jerusalem, and two on Iraq. Still, there are memorable glimpses of scuttled aspiration, among them a hoped-for “socialistic partnership” linking Jewish and Arab agricultural communities. In the book’s heart, which is focused on post–World War II decades, the author slows the pace, digging deeply into the cycles of violence that have so powerfully shaped contemporary life. In other forums, he has sharply criticized some arguments advanced by pro-Palestinian voices, but here his version of events is not that of an Israel apologist. He condemns the “reckless messianism and nationalist supremacism” that took root in Israel after the country won the 1967 Six-Day War and has since “threatened the very existence of Jewish democracy.” Another well-documented throughline concerns an underreported outcome of radical Islamist terrorism: Arab Christians “have suffered the greatest purge” in recent regional history. Addressing conflicts that extend to the current war in Gaza, Montefiore concludes that there is reason to hope: “All the way through this history, many lived as they wished and as they should and valued an open, tolerant vision of the Middle East that is every bit as authentic and powerful as that of the intolerant and violent. The choices of how to live in the future belong to the peoples themselves.”

A bustling, knowledgeable history.