Oren's huge book survey's the long American history (and entanglements and pre-occupations)in the Middle East. Far from being a recent phenomenon, Middle Eastern terrorists (then called pirates) were the top foreign policy priority for Thomas Jefferson's new administration. Oren's writing is beautiful and gripping, the narratives he tells fascinating, and the history an essential one.

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This is a huge undertaking (22cd's),which presents an exhaustive (and exhausting) review of American relations with the Middle East from 1776 to "the present" (was written in 2007.

The author was born and educated in the US but emigrated to Israel, where he served as the Israeli ambassador to the US. Book is very informative although it occasionally suffers from TMI- how many hours can you spend on early American missionaries to the Middle East before you lose interest?

The book also suffers from occasional non-facts; he describes one Civil War general as finishing second in his class, behind George Armstrong Custer who was first. In fact, Custer finished LAST in his class, a fact repeated in every Custer biography I have read (several).

My major complaint was with the reader - he drones on and on, livening up his presentation by mispronouncing many words. The author uses a lot of French phrases, and, while I'm not conversant in that language, nearly every phrase in almost unintelligible. The reader's name is Norman Dietz - maybe typing his name will help me remember never to get another audio book in which he is involved.

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