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Summary: Even better than the movie
Review: Movies are often more dazzling than the events they are based upon, but this is a rare instance in which even Hollywood and David Lean could not do justice to their larger than life subject matter. Although Lawrence seemed to think he was writing a history of WWI in the middle east, his account of the war is episodic and confusing. But that doesn't matter at all. This is one of the most astounding adventure stories ever told, all the more amazing because it's true. Or, if you're not an adventure enthusiast, read it as a travelogue of the middle east. Lawrence will fascinate you with such seemingly prosaic things as the texture of the Arabian sand. In many ways, this is one of the greatest books ever written. Lawrence was, however, a product of his times. His attitude toward the Arab people vascillates between admiration and patronization, and some readers might find this aspect of the book distasteful.
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Summary: Beyond Triumph
Review: One cannot confine such a mans brillance into such words as these. 7 Pillars is a must read for any who questions their own humanity. It is a wonder of discription and varying emotions, never letting go. You are not just reading about Lawrence in this text you are pulled in and become him. Through his eyes and mind you are involved totally in one of the greatest events in western civilization. Which all being extreemly accurate and living. Read this book!!!!!!!
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Summary: Stubborn and courageous quest for significance in the desert
Review: One of the enduring themes of Lawrence's story for me is his stubborn and courageous quest for significance, which came closest to reaching the grail in the hostile world of the Arabian desert and its bedouin culture, which both attracted and repelled him. Readers for whom that theme resonates may want to compare a new account of Lawrence's bold desert predecessor, Charles Doughty, whom Lawrence acknowledged as a mentor and whose "Travels in Arabia Deserta" was a vital guide during the Arabian campaign. Lawrence's public recognition of Doughty - in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and elsewhere - rescued the old explorer-writer from obscurity and the two became admiring friends. They shared many of the same conflicts, deriving from partial acceptance of English traditional values and the occasional attraction of the more elemental norms of their reluctant Arab hosts. Andrew Taylor's "God's Fugitive" (available from Amazon.UK) tells the fascinating story of Doughty's lonely and dangerous travels in the 1870s, which he started by smuggling himself along with a Haj caravan to Mecca, as well as of his obdurate refusal to compromise with militant Bedouin Muslims or conventional English editors.
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Summary: Reviewer Anderson hits nail on head with his review
Review: 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!
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Summary: "Precautionary murder" vs. "preemptive defense."
Review: Seven Pillars of Wisdom is fascinating from cover to cover. The book is on some levels Lawrence's study of himself as much as a history of the battles in which he was involved. He writes, "Any protestation of the truth from me was called modesty, self-depreciation. It always irritated me, this silly confusion of shyness, which was conduct, with modesty, which was a point of view... I was not modest, but ashamed of my awkwardness, of my physical envelope, of my solitary unlikeness which made me no companion, but an acquaintance, complete, angular, uncomfortable, as a crystal." This type of introspection is most uncommon in a military man. Not a squeamish soldier, Lawrence was once forced into a situation in which he executed a murderer, and on another occasion he authorized "take no prisoners" after the Turks conducted one of their numerous brutal atrocities. But there were some things even Lawrence recognized as boundaries of civilized behavior best not transgressed. In the final chapters he explains why he thought better of his initial inclination to kill several petty warlords who were participating in and would in the future likely betray the Arab Revolt -- he did not want to teach his Arab followers that "precautionary murder" was a legitimate part of political struggle. One is left wondering what he would have to say about today's politicians who promote "preemptive defense" as a legitimate strategy and standing policy. At least Lawrence's terminology was far more honest and direct.
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Summary: Extraordinary Book by Extraordinary Man
Review: SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM would be that rarity, an extraordinary tale of action, adventure, politics, and introspection, told by a writer who was also a first-rate intellectual and man of letters (the two -are- different), if it weren't also part of a tradition in English letters: the man or woman such as Charles Doughty or Gertrude Bell or Hester Stanhope or Freya Stark, or the men who went off and played the Great Game in India and Afghanistan who willingly entered cultures alien to them and returned changed, with books for us. Of all of these, Lawrence has fascinated me most. I first read SEVEN PILLARS when I was twelve, and I've read it every couple of years since then. As I grow wiser, it grows richer. Lawrence was an unlikely defender of empire, an unlikelier man of action who forced himself into a kind of ascetic mental and physical preparation for the great deeds he felt himself called upon to play. Living as he did from 1888 to 1935, he was practically born in the last age where someone could express that claim without being ridiculed; and he found his war in the Arab Revolt, that long-lasting sideline to the War to End All Wars that produced more war -- and some great writers, among whom Lawrence was one. This is a story of war. It's also a story of heroism and of anguish, written by a man who not only shaped events, but was shaped -- and warped -- by them. It can be read as military strategy, political history, travel story, or pathology. But it's better to read it as itself: a unique and complex book written by a man who was loved and admired by the most famous people of his time, but who, in the end, wanted only obscurity and the anesthetizing speed of one of the motorcycles that killed him.
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Summary: A great adventure
Review: 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.
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Summary: A confounding person
Review: T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, is not just a character in an overrated movie. I found him to be much more engaging in his print narrative, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But even here, in purportedly a true account (that he later confessed was embellished), he comes across as a divided person. He tells the most personal of details (who among us would casually tell of being urinated on by a camel while lying half dead of some illness?) but retains a very remote, properly British reserve on every single page. This is my first complaint with Lawrence; he recites events very quickly and without much explanation. I think part of this comes from his target audience - British readers in the twenties, who would be expected to know more of the personal and place names. Still, there is virtually no background and even with the maps, trying to keep track of where he's going and what he's doing is difficult. Since I'm on the subject of problems, I'll bring up the other one, his honesty. Nowhere in the book itself does he say that he's embellishing anything. That admission came later in his life, so the text itself gives no hints as to what's true and what isn't. My best understanding is that he portrayed the Arabs as being more heroic and effective than they really were. If so, I have to wonder when. This matters because while the earlier parts of the book involved very up close and personal narratives of the battles and travels, later parts remain more remote, with Lawrence announcing that he sent of so-and-so number of fighters to some location where they routed the Turks in X number of days. If his embellishment was in this latter portion, then the damage is minor. Certainly there would be plenty of opportunity to simply state that the Arabs were good when they weren't. But if he made up the more detailed events of the earlier parts, then this is a serious problem. I'm inclined to think the former case is likely, since the early chapters aren't really all that flattering of Arabs. He often finds their mind-set to be maddening, though he was a student of the Middle East and spoke the language long before the war started. He comments once (somewhat obliquely) that British troops on maneuvers for extended periods by themselves could come into an Arab town, take a look at the available Arab women, and promptly turn to homosexuality. PC he is not.
Having sat through the movie version years ago with no real idea what it was about, it was nice to finally see what made Lawrence famous. Basically, during the First World War, he was tasked with trying to incite Arab nationalism against the Turks, who then controlled much of Arabia. He lived among them, trained them, and led raids. Typically, this involved attacks on Turkish trains and lightning raids on outposts and towns. Trying to keep the clannish Arabs focused on the bigger task proved a monumental undertaking, requiring among other things Lawrence's assurances that British promises of independence would be kept after the war's end. He expressed in the pages some curious guilt, believing that he was lying. Strictly speaking, he was, since the post-war peace did not work out exactly as planned (when do they ever?). Though outside the context of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the interested reader can find plenty of evidence that the Arab leaders were far from innocent babes in the post-war partitioning (see Karsh, Empires of the Sand for an example with complicated writing worthy of Lawrence). Lawrence gives them too little credit.
What still eludes me is the source of Lawrence's great fame. Not that his exploits are unimpressive. But how did anyone in the public find out about them at the time? This, however, is also a side issue. Lawrence tried, I think, to downplay his own actions. He was never happy with his own fame, later changing his name to Shaw just to avoid publicity (Shaw of Arabia just doesn't work, does it?). But overall, despite the clipped and remote style, the confusing movements and spellings (place names get different spellings on the same page), and his own efforts at obscuration, Seven Pillars of Wisdom still contains a truly heroic and inspiring bit of storytelling.
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Summary: Will Power Catalyst of Strength Through Unity
Review: T.E. Lawrence narrates with passion and in his peculiar style the years he spent in the Middle East, first as archeologist before WWI then as "free agent" of the British government in its fight against Turkey and Germany during WWI. Lawrence knew from the beginning of the Arab campaign that he was a "fraud" because of the duplicity of the French and British. Lawrence rightly perceived that if the Arabs won the war against Turkey and its German ally, the powerbrokers of that time would steal from the Arabs the fruit of their victory. Promises of self-government afterwards would be dead paper. After the end of the hostilities, Lawrence skillfully advised King Feisal and his delegation to get as many of the spoils of war as possible from the victors at the Conference of Paris. After the conference, the French could largely be blamed for undermining the regime of King Feisal in Damascus and pushing him to ultimately leave for Baghdad. The contemporary Middle East could have been very different from what it is now. History has the annoying habit of repeating itself over time because of the widely shared inability of mankind to learn from past mistakes. Despite Lawrence's disclaimer in his introduction, his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom A Triumph" offers valuable lessons to a contemporary audience to better understand the enduring complexity of the Middle East. Whoever has had the chance to journey through the Middle East can vividly remember at least some locations that Lawrence describes. The Middle East is one of the cradles of the Western civilization. Its cultural heritage is almost unmatched. The ancient law of hospitality is not an urban legend, but remains a reality of which Semitic people can be proud. Lawrence understood very well that condescending attitude towards Semitic people could only backfire. Treating its inhabitants with respect and understanding earned him their enduring trust. For those who have not had the opportunity to crisscross the region, Lawrence's narration provides a rare opportunity to gain valuable insights into the minds of Semitic nations. For example: Lawrence observed that Semitic people were not inclined to compromise, pursing the logic of their respective incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity (pg. 38). Does it not sound familiar for example in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today?
British forces won battle after battle against the Turks in Iraq until they reached Ctesiphon, where they met pugnacious enemy troops, and were abruptly checked. They fell back, dazed. Until the end of WWI, the British in Iraq remained an occupying force, with the local people passively neutral or sullenly against them (pg. 59-60, 636). Does that assessment not sound similar to the experience of the Coalition forces in Iraq today? Working tirelessly by both indirect influence and education rather than by forceful direction is key to avoid becoming or remaining a target practice. Extreme patience was another lesson to Lawrence of what native leadership meant (pg. 122). Lawrence felt that Semitic people were looking for a stranger to lead them, one whose supremacy should be based on an idea: illogical, undeniable: which instinct might accept and reason find no rational basis to reject or approve (pg. 234). Would this not ring true to the ears of the architects of the road map to peace? External will power exercised on all sides with the same strength is necessary to get out of the current impasse in the Middle Eastern peace process. The dream of both Lawrence and King Feisal is not dead. One day, the Middle East will be united in an Islamic Economic Community, precursor of an Islamic Union that has Islam, democracy and economic liberalism as its three founding pillars. There is no need for an old-fashioned caliphate. The capital of the future Islamic Economic Community could be, for example, in Amman or Dubai to avoid unhealthy rivalries between the larger and more powerful Semitic nations. Israel and the would-be Islamic Economic Community could be linked peacefully after the relationship existing between the European Union and The European Free Trade Association.
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Summary: A Great Piece of Literature and History
Review: T.E.Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", published in 1926 is a stark contrast to much of the literary works of that time (compare to Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" published in 1928). I thought his dispassionate, photographic, unflowery, and crisply accurate and detailed descriptions of his experiences, his quick sizing up of the abilities and characters of the people he had to deal with, his self criticism, agonizing over his betrayal of the Arabs who helped him for the benefit of England to be very refreshing. His vocabulary was excellent. Somehow I find it hard to imagine Virginia Woolf as being self critical in a public way like Lawarence was. And her choice of words was about at the same level as Miss Manners. It is ironic that both books dealt with the Turks as an anvil. The Sick Man of Europe was disintegrating. Virginia's Orlando described the pleasant boredom of an ambassador's life in Instanbul and T.E. endured a bloody beating to avoid being raped by a homosexual officer in the Turkish army, between blowing up Turkish trains. Somehow that didn't make it to the movie. In the coddled civilization in which we men (and women) live today, it is a good reminder that there are reasons why you don't pander to the perverse, stupid, and ignorant. T. E. Lawarence maintained the highest standards, standing apart, the best of leaders. A good example and a book well written that is worth reading over and over.
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