How Lawrence of Arabia and a Jewish agronomist from Palestine mapped the land and conflicts of the modern Middle East

In the turmoil of the First World War, while the Great Powers secretly plotted the future of the Middle East, a second lieutenant from Oxfordshire and a Jewish agronomist from Palestine audaciously imagined new nationsArab and Jewishrising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. T. E. Lawrence, who would later become the iconic Lawrence of Arabia, used his assignment of coordinating Arab support for British war strategies to advance the dreams of an Arab state. Aaron Aaronsohn gave up a distinguished career in science and, with his sister Sarah, established a secret spy network in wartime Palestine, providing the intelligence that enabled the British victory over the Turks.

Their arguments in wartime Cairo and at the Peace Conference in Paris presaged the political battles of the Middle East today. In this gripping narrative history, Ronald Florence resurrects the exploits and sacrifices of an unsung Zionist hero, deconstructs the legend of Lawrence of Arabia, and provides new perspectives on the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"'In this dual biography of two key figures in Middle Eastern history, Florence (Blood Libel) grounds the clash of Arab and Jewish nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire's collapse during WWI. T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia') was a flamboyant British officer and romantic partisan of a mythologized Arab people, who cobbled together an anti-Turkish revolt out of fractious Bedouin clans. Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew and an agronomist who pioneered the Zionist effort to make the desert bloom, organized a spy ring to feed intelligence on Ottoman defenses in Palestine to the British. There's suspense and pathos in Florence's saga of the war-torn Middle East — Aaronsohn's sister, also a spy, was tortured by the Turks and committed suicide — along with eye-glazing diplomatic wrangling as Aaronsohn and Lawrence try to influence British policy toward conquered Ottoman lands. Florence's portraits of his protagonists color his account of the competing political claims. His depiction of Aaronsohn makes Zionism the more authentic nation-building project, deeply rooted in the careful stewardship of a soil watered with Zionist blood, while Arab nationalism comes off as largely a shallow, alien conceit imported by an eccentric Englishman to Bedouin more interested in booty than independence. (See alsoAaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East, reviewed on p. 44.) Photos.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Florence tells the story of how T.E. Lawrence, who would later become the iconic Lawrence of Arabia, and a Jewish agronomist from Palestine map the land and conflicts of the modern Middle East. 16 pages of b&w photos throughout.

Ronald Florence is a historian and novelist, and the author of The Gypsy Man, The Perfect Machine and Blood Libel. This is his ninth book.