
Lawrence in Arabia
2013 · 624 pages
Four amateurs shaped the modern Middle East, Anderson argues, and the strangest was Lawrence, an Oxford archaeologist who led an Arab revolt knowing his government had already promised the land away.
★ 5.7

Four amateurs shaped the modern Middle East, Anderson argues, and the strangest was Lawrence, an Oxford archaeologist who led an Arab revolt knowing his government had already promised the land away.

Keegan asked what a battle feels like to the man standing in it, and answered through Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. He put the reader inside the ranks and remade military history.

Win without fighting, Sun Tzu writes, and he means it literally. Twenty-five centuries ago this Chinese general reduced war to deception, terrain, and knowing the enemy as thoroughly as you know yourself.