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Title: Seven Pillars of Wisdom : A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence ISBN: 0-385-41895-7 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 June, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (36 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating Account of Arab Revolt
Comment: Absolutely fascinating account of the Arab Revolt of World War I, and of the Mind of one of its orchestrators (that being TE Lawrence). I don't know much about WWI or II history but I'd recommend this as a great place to start. It has all the elements of a great war story -- strategies, battles, troop movements, intra-battling amongst Arab tribes, Arab history and culture, plus Lawrence's inner conflict about his knowledge that the Brits were merely using the Arabs as a pawn in the greater scheme of WWI. The relevance to modern times is staggering -- if we had not made the horrible mistakes we did then (not giving the Arabs the indepence they worked so hard for), the world would certainly be a better place today. Also, this book is beautifully written and contains absolutely wonderful descriptions of the Arabian terrain. My only criticism is that Lawrence tends sometimes to get a little too abstract and pontifical, but that's okay. Excellent work of literature in the form of a non-fiction memoir.
Rating: 5
Summary: Extraordinary Book by Extraordinary Man
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Work Of Homosexual Literature
Comment: After reading this book I read all 35 Amazon reviews and was surprised that everyone had missed the point of this masterpiece. TE Lawrence wrote a masterwork of pro-homosexual propaganda. This book is about what it is meant to be a homosexual in an early 20th Century heterosexual world through the metaphor of a deceitful British Officer operating as a leader helping to create an uprising in the Arabic War zone in the First World War. Two further twists are added to the metaphor as Arabic culture is essentially homosexual in nature and Lawrence is forced to lie about the real British motivations throughout his time in Arabia. (But please be clear I am not gay). Lawrence learned how to operate successfully in the (for him totally foreign) Arabic world in the same way that gays had to learn how to operate in the heterosexual world of the West. But also kept secret the true British military intentions for over seven years in the same way that turn of the century gays were forced to stay in their closets, never revealing their true motivations.
While the book is extremely long and uses a small font size, Lawrence's prose is exceedingly economical and many of his sentences are structured in a way that a good deal more is left unsaid, yet understood, than sneers from the pages. His contemptuous descriptions and scornful imagery of his fellow men make plain an underlying self-hatred that even thousands of hours of buttock pounding on a string of prize camels cannot relieve. The strongest and most irresistible impressions about Lawrence are formed during critical moments when he executes a man, turns his back on an armed robber and slowly rides away, gets horny when whipped by Turkish soldiers for refusing to service their officer, rides endless camel miles without complaint, repeatedly radically deprives himself of creature comforts, and uses an unassailable sense of irony whenever dealing with his commanding officers. Knowing that his past roles in the army included being one of the people that hand-colored military maps, reflected appropriately upon his character.
A good part of TE's current reputation was built by the 5 Oscar winning movie Lawrence of Arabia, but the movie is only loosely based on the book and takes only the story themes in the book that are most complimentary to TE and least aligned with history. The movie bests the book in scenery; the book wins in all other dimensions. TE's view of the world is not easily classified into a stereotype as he vacillates between extreme cynicism and innocent trust, and derisive commentary and respectful remarks. Nevertheless, he clearly had a world class intellect and the cunning of a terrorist. His insightful commentary on Arabs revealing them as tribal, inward-looking, blinkered, narrow-minded, unthinking, vengeful and insular explains why this book is still recommended reading at several leading Western military schools. By the end of the book, Lawrence was a real person, but not one I would like working on my team. His sarcastic, arrogant, disdainful, sardonic, acerbic, mordant, derogatory, uncomplimentary, depreciatory, critical, sniping, self-important, condescending, scathing, and mocking mindset would quickly tire me. Read the book if you want to fully understand why I wrote the sentence that way!!
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Title: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence by John E. MacK ISBN: 0674704940 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: With Lawrence in Arabia: Lost Treasures by Lowell Thomas, Phillip Knightley ISBN: 1853755001 Publisher: Prion Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title:Lawrence of Arabia ASIN: B00003CXB2 Publisher: Columbia Tri-Star Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $28.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $23.76 |
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Title: Lawrence of Arabia (Da Capo Paperback) by Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Henry, Sir Basil, Hart Liddell, B. H. Liddell Hart ISBN: 0306803542 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: May, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Part 1 by T. E. Lawrence ISBN: 0766139905 Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Company Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $31.00 |
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