The Great War for Civilisation
The Conquest of the Middle East
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Robert Fisk’s bestselling eyewitness account of the events that have shaped the Middle East is alive with vivid reporting and incisive historical analysis.
The history of the Middle East is an epic story of tragedy, betrayal and world-shaking events. It is a story that Robert Fisk has been reporting for over thirty years. His masterful narrative spans the most volatile regions of the Middle East, chronicling with both rage and compassion the death by deceit of tens of thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Robert Fisk’s remarkable history is also the tale of a journalist at war – learning of the 9/11 attacks while aboard a passenger jet, reporting from a bombed-out Baghdad, interviewing Osama bin Laden – and of the courage and frustration of a life spent writing the first draft of history.
Reviews
‘For sheer bravery, dazzling prose, three interviews with Osama bin Laden and an unrivalled collection of awards won over three decades, there is nobody to match Robert Fisk. This book is his testament.’ Sunday Times
‘Brilliant…powerfully written.’ Independent on Sunday
‘A remarkable book.’ New Statesman
‘Fisk writes with a marvellous resource of image and language. His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking.’ Neal Ascherson, Independent
‘His forte is straight reporting, such as his three interviews with Osama bin Laden. At least as good are his meetings with Saddam Hussein, Khomeini and Sadeq Khalkhali, the hanging judge of the Iranian revolution, and his close-ups of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the launch of Saddam's war against Iran, an ambush by Islamists of an Algerian police patrol, and a lift into trouble in an Apache attack helicopter on the Iraq/Turkey border.’ Guardian
‘A mammoth and magisterial work, the definitive summation of what has gone wrong in the West’s foreign policies towards Arabia.’ Scottish Sunday Herald
‘A stimulating and absorbing book, by a man who speaks Arabic, who has known the region better than most, and has met the leading players, from bin Laden to Ahmad Chalabi. A formidable production.’ New York Times
‘Full of furious, vivid and highly personalised writing…An important book by an intrepid and talented writer.’ Literary Review
‘Vivid, graphic, intense and very personal…this is a book of unquestionable importance.’ Washington Post
About the author
Robert Fisk is a bestselling author and journalist based in Beirut as Middle East correspondent of the ‘Independent’. He has lived in the Middle East for three decades and holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. He is also the author of ‘Pity the Nation’, a history of the Lebanese war, and ‘The Age of the Warrior’, an anthology of his ‘Comment’ pieces from the ‘Independent’.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk (Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon) has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. The book opens with a deftly juxtaposed account of Fisk's two interviews with Osama bin Laden. In the first, held in Sudan in 1993, bin Laden declared himself "a construction engineer and an agriculturist." He had no time to train mujahideen, he said; he was busy constructing a highway. In the second, held four years later in Afghanistan, he declared war on the Saudi royal family and America.Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement.
