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Book: Power, Faith, And Fantasy: America In The Middle East, 1776 To

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  • Book: Power, Faith, And Fantasy: America In The Middle East, 1776 To

    POWER, FAITH, AND FANTASY: AMERICA IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1776 TO THE PRESENT

    Kirkus Reviews
    November 1, 2006

    American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs is hardly new -- and,
    writes historian Oren (Six Days of War, 2001, etc.), mostly "graced
    with good intentions."

    The Middle East -- a term, Oren notes, coined by an American admiral a
    century ago -- was a subject of intense interest across the waters in
    the early days of the Republic, thanks in good measure to the work of
    Mediterranean privateers who pressed American sailors into slavery. Add
    to that the natural strangeness of the Arab world, and, writes Oren,
    for Thomas Jefferson the region was "a bastion of infidel-hating
    pirates as well as a realm of exotic wonders." Thus it would remain,
    at least until the piracy problem was attended to. The slavery problem
    was another matter, and Oren takes up a rewarding theme by examining
    the uses to which it was put in American abolitionist circles. In
    decades to come, fast ships would carry Americans across the sea in
    great numbers. Some made the heart of the Middle East part of the
    Grand Tour, some made the Holy Land an object of pilgrimage and its
    inhabitants one of proselytism; and some saw in the region a source of
    commerce and wealth, even before the discovery of oil. Interestingly,
    as Oren explores in detail, many travelers of all stripes tended
    to be anti-imperialist, regarding British designs on the region as
    a problem, even if Harper's magazine did opine that "Civilization
    gains whenever any misgoverned country passes under the control of
    a European race." That proto-neoconservative declaration is one of
    many parallels that the reader can reasonably draw between then and
    now. Oren suggests that much American activity in the Middle East,
    from Red Cross founder Clara Barton's intercession on behalf of
    besieged Armenians to the work of hydrologists and agronomists in
    making Palestine fertile ground, was benign. When it was not, it had
    unpleasant consequences, as with the machinations of one anti-Semitic
    ambassador and the present messy stage of what Oren calls the "thirty
    years war" following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran.

    Of considerable interest in that difficult time: well argued, and
    full of telling moments.

    Publication Date: 1/15/2007 0:00:00 Publisher: Norton Stage: Adult
    ISBN: 0-393-05826-3 Price: $29.95 Author: Oren, Michael B.
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