I really wish more people would read books about this area of history. It would make such a difference to how the Middle East is understood globally if it was understood just how many of the current problems were created by the Brits and the US. It's always been about greed, oil, and capitalism.

Lords of the Desert may be a hard book for a modern American audience considering that the United States and Great Britain have been fast international allies for centuries. But Lords of the Dessert chronicles the thirty years of Middle Eastern relations between the United States and Great Britain from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Sometimes, the countries collaborated, sometimes they broke with each other, and occasionally they appear to have sabotaged each other. What could account for such a complicated relationship?

Great Britain was the greatest empire modern times had ever seen, but war had exhausted and bankrupted it. The United States viewed itself as the new global power following WW2 victory and sought to use that influence. It turns out that empire does not yield to rational human thought, which led to a tug of war of sorts between a Great Britain desperate to retain something of empire and their place in global affairs and the United States who had their own version of the Middle East that didn’t always square with their British “friends.”

It’s an action packed narrative that belongs in the library of any individual who wants to know how the Middle East became what it is today.

An essential book for understanding the modern Middle East but does make for kinda dry reading very informative though

I confess to a high level of ignorance (or a low level of awareness, depending on how I feel that day) about the Middle East. I know things are basically a huge mess there, have been for many years, and seem unlikely to improve (despite Jared Kushner being put in charge of peace in the Middle East). I really enjoyed Richard Engel’s book And Then All Hell Broke Loose, learning a lot in the process.  I definitely can use more, and  I was happy to have the opportunity to read Lords of the Desert by James Hall (thanks to Perseus Books/Basic Books and NetGalley) in return for my honest review.

This book takes advantage of recently declassified documents to bring a fresh perspective to the study of Britain’s exit from the Middle East. The typical view has been that Arab nationalism (including the rise of leaders such as Nasser in Egypt, for example) and popular uprisings forced Britain to reassess their colonial power and depart. In Lords of the Desert, Barr presents a new view: that the United States was actually the driving force behind Britain’s exit. This brings a somewhat different view of the causes of the current situation, and is a fascinating look overall at the relationship between the two nations. Seems to me that we tend to think of as having been inseparable allies for hundreds of years, but that is not such a certainty after reading this book.

TBH, I am pretty sure I am not the intended audience for this book. James Barr is an amazing historian (he studied history at Lincoln College, Oxford and is currently a visiting fellow at King’s College, London. He has written extensively on the Middle East and it is clear he knows his stuff.  So, what’s my problem? It seemed there was a considerable assumption of a level of prior knowledge that I just don’t have. So I felt lost much of the time and stupid the rest of the time. As a history, it likely deserves all the stars it can get. For the casual reader who lacks real knowledge of even the basic history of Britain in the Middle East, it earns two stars. (Five stars for his research)