Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present
reviewed on + 107 more book reviews


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.