Sowing The Wind

The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East

by John Keay

John Murray, London, 2003 [First Edition], ISBN 0719555833, hardcover, dustjacket, black & white photographs

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear

'The seeds of conflict throughout the Middle East were sown in the first 60 years of the 20th century. It was then that the Western powers - Britain, France and the USA - discovered the imperatives for intervention that have plunged the region into crisis ever since. It was then, too, that most of the region's modern-day states were created and their regimes forged; and then that their management by the West earned abiding resentment. "Sowing the Wind" tells of how and why this happened. The subject is painful and essentially sombre, but John Keay illuminates it with lucid analysis and anecdotes. This is that rarest of works, a history with humour, an epic with attitude, a dirge that delights. Here are unearthed a host of unregarded precedents, from the Gulf's first "gusher" to the first aerial assault on Baghdad, the first of Syria's innumerable coups, and the first terrorist outrages and suicide bombers. Pre-Balfour to post-Suez, the familiar landmarks loom afresh from the obscure antics of lobbyists and the agonizings of administrations.'