T.E. Lawrence and the Making of the Modern Middle East

History and great historical sweeps are generally not just a series of unfortunate events. Rather, they are part of long connected progression of events, that circle around and become knotted in each other and that have far reaching consequences that last years, decades and sometimes centuries.  It  often seems that, because we seldom learn from such events, that these historical events don’t have a normal half life.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in today’s Middle East. A place where today's troubles are often the result of yesterday folly.

Might it have been different, if a century ago the British had listened to T.E. Lawrence, the man popularized in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.  

Journalist and author Scott Anderson, lays out the reality of those events that might have changed the world, in his book Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

My conversation with Scott Anderson: