The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century

Reviewed by John C. Campbell

William Polk, a professional in history and in diplomacy who is fully at home in the Middle East, manages to simplify without distorting of the region's problems of war and peace, of wealth and poverty, and of adaptation to the modern world, setting them against a background of political and cultural history. His vision is keen and his judgments worth pondering.