Greed and intrigue combine explosively in this gripping tale of how the mercurial Lawrence of Arabia changed the Middle East forever. It was T. E. Lawrence’s classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom that made the Arab Revolt a legend and helped turn the British intelligence officer into the mythical “Lawrence of Arabia.” But the intrigue behind the revolt and its startling consequences for the present-day Middle East have remained a mystery for nearly one hundred years. James Barr spent four years trawling declassified archives in Europe and crossing the hostile deserts of the Middle East to re-create the revolt as the international drama it really was. A colorful cast of Arab sheiks, British and French soldiers, spies, and diplomats come together in this gripping narrative of political maneuvering, guerrilla warfare, and imperial greed. Setting the Desert on Fire is a masterly account of a key moment in the history of the Middle East, and a portrait of Lawrence himself that is bright, nuanced, and full of fresh insights into the true nature of the master mythmaker.

_______________ 'Packs as much punch as one of Lawrence's train-blowing explosives' - Sunday Times 'Barr's cogent, vividly written book puts Lawrence centre stage but does not lose sight of the uprising's larger historical context' - Financial Times '[Barr] introduces fresh materials to give new context to Lawrence and the present difficulties in Iraq' - The Times _______________ The full story behind the desert revolt made famous by T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the film Lawrence of Arabia It is 1916. The Allies are struggling in the Great War. The Ottoman Sultan calls for a pan-Islamic jihad against all non-Muslims except Germans. But Sharif Husein, ruler of the holy city of Mecca, is smarting under Turkish rule, fomenting Arab nationalism and lobbying the British to support him. It seems to the British a good idea secretly to encourage an Arab revolt. Setting the Desert on Fire is a masterly account of this key moment made legendary by T. E. Lawrence, but here filled with a wide range of characters including the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, whose desire to capture 'Jerusalem by Christmas' had consequences that reverberate to this day.

This radically new perspective on T. E. Lawrence, the Arab Revolt, and WWI in the Middle East provides essential insight into today’s violent conflicts. Archaeologist and historian Neil Faulkner draws on ten years of field research in the Middle East to offer the first truly multidisciplinary history of the conflicts that raged in Sinai, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria during the First World War. Rarely is a book published that revises our understanding of an entire world region and the history that has defined it. This groundbreaking volume makes just such a contribution. In Lawrence of Arabia’s War, Faulkner sheds new light on British intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence and his legendary military campaigns. He explores the intersections among the declining Ottoman Empire, the Bedouin tribes, rising Arab nationalism, and Western imperial ambition. Faulkner arrives at a provocative new analysis of Ottoman resilience in the face of modern industrialized warfare. This analysis leads him to reassesses the relative weight of conventional operations in Palestine and irregular warfare in Syria—and thus the historic roots of today’s divided, fractious, war-torn Middle East.

Traditionally, in general studies of the First World War, the Middle East is an arena of combat that has been portrayed in romanticised terms, in stark contrast to the mud, blood, and presumed futility of the Western Front. Battles fought in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia offered a different narrative on the Great War, one in which the agency of individual figures was less neutered by heavy artillery. As with the historiography of the Western Front, which has been the focus of sustained inquiry since the mid-1960s, such assumptions about the Middle East have come under revision in the last two decades – a reflection of an emerging ‘global turn’ in the history of the First World War. The ‘sideshow’ theatres of the Great War – Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific – have come under much greater scrutiny from historians. The fifteen chapters in this volume cover a broad range of perspectives on the First World War in the Middle East, from strategic planning issues wrestled with by statesmen through to the experience of religious communities trying to survive in war zones. The chapter authors look at their specific topics through a global lens, relating their areas of research to wider arguments on the history of the First World War.

Ultimately these cross purposes brought disaster, pulling a fatally weak and woefully unprepared Ottoman state into a global war, and unleashing vicious, internal ethnic repression that brought it defeat and dismemberment. The diaries and official reports of German spy and propagandist Curt Prufer - translated here into English in their entirety for the first time - chronicle the complexities of the fragile Ottoman-German alliance from the perspective of a participant. Much like fellow soldier-scholar T.E. Lawrence, Prufer and his colleagues tried to steal the loyalties of the Muslim subjects of the opposing sides. The book explores these episodes of sabotage, subversion and subterfuge - from managing spies to preparing for the attack on the Suez Canal in 1915 - and in the process sheds light onto the ways World War I played out across the Middle East. Complemented throughout by in-depth and meticulously researched footnotes, this primary source collection is an invaluable addition to the extant corpus of late Ottoman and World War I historical documents.

In the desert sands of southern Jordan lies a once-hidden conflict landscape along the Hejaz Railway. Built at the beginning of the twentieth-century, this narrow-gauge 1,320 km track stretched from Damascus to Medina and served to facilitate participation in the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. The discovery and archaeological investigation of an unknown landscape of insurgency and counter-insurgency along this route tells a different story of the origins of modern guerrilla warfare, the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Bedouin warriors, and the dramatic events of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18. Ten years of research in this prehistoric terrain has revealed sites lost for almost 100 years: vast campsites occupied by railway builders; Ottoman Turkish machine-gun redoubts; Rolls Royce Armoured Car raiding camps; an ephemeral Royal Air Force desert aerodrome; as well as the actual site of the Hallat Ammar railway ambush. This unique and richly illustrated account from Nicholas Saunders tells, in intimate detail, the story of a seminal episode of the First World War and the reshaping of the Middle East that followed.

Saul David's 100 DAYS TO VICTORY is a totally original, utterly engaging account of the Great War - the first book to tell the story of the 'war to end all wars' through the events of one hundred key days between 1914 and 1918. 100 DAYS TO VICTORY is a 360 degree portrait of a global conflict that stretched east from the shores of Britain to the marshes of Iraq, and south from the forests of Russia to the bush of German South East Africa. Throughout his gripping narrative we hear the voices of men and women both eminent and ordinary, some who were spectators on the Home Front, others - including Saul David's own family - who were deeply embroiled in epic battles that changed the world forever. 100 DAYS TO VICTORY is the work of a great historian and supreme story teller. Most importantly, it is also an enthralling tribute to a generation whose sacrifice should never be forgotten.

Broadly this book is about the Arabian desert as the locus of exploration by a long tradition of British travellers that includes T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger; more specifically, it is about those who, since 1950, have followed in their literary footsteps. In analysing modern works covering a land greater than the sum of its geographical parts, the discussion identifies outmoded tropes that continue to impinge upon the perception of the Middle East today while recognising that the laboured binaries of “East and West”, “desert and sown”, “noble and savage” have outrun their course. Where, however, only a barren legacy of latent Orientalism may have been expected, the author finds instead a rich seam of writing that exhibits diversity of purpose and insight contributing to contemporary discussions on travel and tourism, intercultural representation, and environmental awareness. By addressing a lack of scholarly attention towards recent additions to the genre, this study illustrates for the benefit of students of travel literature, or indeed anyone interested in “Arabia”, how desert writing, under the emerging configurations of globalisation, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism, acts as a microcosm of the kinds of ethical and emotional dilemmas confronting today’s travel writers in the world’s most extreme regions.

This special ebook has been created by historian Saul David from his acclaimed work 100 Days to Vistory: How the Great War was Fought and Won, which was described by the Mail on Sunday as 'Inspired' and by Charles Spencer as 'A work of great originality and insight'. Through key dates from 4 August 1914, when Britain declared war, to the Christmas Truce of 24 December 1914, Saul David's gripping narrative is an enthralling tribute to a generation of men and women whose sacrifice should never be forgotten.