Listening to the audio book reinforced my learning experience and I would recommend that others who wish to learn more about the rifts and turmoil that exist in that region today. At the time, I was amazed about how much I learned about the modern Middle East and how World War One, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the colonial desires of Great Britain influenced the predicament that this region confronts today. I read this book (paperback) when it was first published in the late 1980's.

Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time, describing how the choices narrowed and the Middle East began along a road that led to the conflicts and confusion that continue to this day.Ī new afterword from Fromkin, written for this edition of the book, includes his invaluable, updated assessment of this region of the world today, and on what this history has to teach us. In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. All of these conflicts - including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis and the violent challenges posed by Iraq's competing sects - are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions.

A peace to end all peace