Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.87 You Save: $16.13 (77%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.11 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
Book Review: the deserts fondest stranger
Summary: 5 Stars
I recommend buying a map and locating the seven cities that are the seven pillars of wisdom before riding your camel through this highly rewarding terrain. T.E. Lawrence can write and write well is the magic discovery of this book. I recommend reading a biography first though. An excellent one written by Jeremy Wilson is a good start. Then read this. The biography will give you a good idea of what a complex figure Lawrence is from early days as archeologist and medieval fortification expert to being recruited for WW1 intelligence and usurping his superiors with his vast fields of knowledge, the biography will set the scene to truly enjoy this masterpiece of guerilla warfare. Those who are interested in the clash of cultures will enjoy Lawrence's way with the various Arab personalities which he must befriend and betray in due time. Lawrence's loyalties are none too sure in these perilous times and become all the more tenuous as the war nears its end. Poor Lawrence, his scholarly and energetic and wide minded ideals and impulses which win him friends in the Arab world are qualities which an older and more cynical culture merely uses to its own ends. Great great read. More stars are due.Book Review: Reviewer Anderson hits nail on head with his review
Summary: 5 Stars
Seldom does a reviewer do as good a job putting a classic into perspective as does reviewer Charles W. Anderson. Look at his comment below and you will understand why all foreigners currently charged with putting Iraq back together need to take care before they proceed!Outsiders must insert their positions only at critical control points with a view towards preventing catastrophe. In that sense, it is Westerners who must fight the guerrilla campaign and not become a fixed target for the various factions fighting to become king of the mountain.
As did Anderson, I found this book to be of exceptional value to gain some insight into the Arab mindset. As Lawrence indicates in his writings, Feisal would likely have put together a great nation if only the more educated and sophisticated European powers would have allowed it.
Mr. Anderson is right also is mourning the first Middle East regime change imposed by France when they forced Feisal to leave Syria. How ironic that France so strongly opposed the more recent necessary regime change!
Read 7 Pillars of Wisdom and learn from a master!
Book Review: Deserves the highest acclaim it gets
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book after visiting Turkey and Jordan some years ago and was bedazzled by it in every respect. A remarkable military campaign, the extremely complex Lawrence and the account of WWI with the historical figures Ataturk, Feisal, Allenby etc. The victory of the Arabs and the British, with all the military daring and intrigue is one of the most amazing stories of the war. That Lawrence just happened to be a literary giant as well and could write as intensely well as perhaps any other 20th C English writer (that I know) is one of those strange coincidences that defies probability.
The book was all the more enjoyed for having explored Jordan (and Wadi Rumm in particular on foot) and for some chance encounters with bedouin there in the middle of nowhere. A different way of life that still survives in some parts.
The movie "Lawrence of Arabia" is based on the book, but is just a visually stunning film, but has no complexity. Admittedly I haven't seen all of it, but I would rather read the book again.
Book Review: Foundations of conflict
Summary: 5 Stars
It is difficult to describe the experience of reading The Seven Pillars. It is by turns beautiful and ugly. It is military history. It is a subjective view provided by a man very much of his time. It is an apology and an excuse for the necessities of war. It is a portrait of a tribe that Lawrence came to respect and even love. It is a travel book about life in the desert at the time of writing. It is inevitably a mix of fact and history and fiction and probably at least a little bit of wishful thinking.
It is, ultimately, a pretty amazing book to read.
A few notes:
Before you read the book, do some quick background reading on the history that's involved. This will help avoid confusion.
Be prepared for a long read! It's not only a long book, it's an extremely dense book. The choppiness and frequent changes in tone make it hard to put on the reading cruise control.
Read it as a product of its time. Lawrence was a fascinating man, but not without his prejudices or faults.
Book Review: A great adventure
Summary: 5 Stars
Since I was a big fan of the film, I felt I had to read this book. I found it to be a great adventure and the book was realist because it told all the nasty parts about the desert that you don't see in the movie. Like the part when the Bedouin would get lost out in the dessert, they would eat the camels to stay alive. The other thing was that everybody when they started out on a campaign would get dysentery until you got used to the water and food. It gave you an insight to the internal fortitude of all the characters. I wondered why the characters dressed as they did in the movie like Prince Faisal and Audi Abu Tye. When you see the prints in the book they look just like these characters as does Lawrence.
To me the book read like a Robert Louis Stevenson adventure except the story is true. I would recommend this as one of the books to read in a history class of the Middle East in WWI instead of the bland history I was taught. This shows what the people were really about.