A brilliant exercise in intellectual history and a searching enquiry into the political and social malaise of the Arab world in the critical periods following the defeat of 1967 and the partial victory of 1973. The author, an American scholar of Arab origin, is sympathetic, but merciless in his exposé of the myths and illusions which have served as the dominant ideologies in inter-Arab relations and in the attraction-rejection complex that has marked the connection with the West.