Emiliano Ponzi In The New York Times Book Review, Alex von Tunzelmann reviews “Lawrence in Arabia,†Scott Anderson’s new book about T. E. Lawrence. Von Tunzelmann writes:
There have, of course, been shelf-loads of books on Lawrence and his sphere, and an extremely famous film. But the existence of previous works may trouble critics more than readers. After all, somebody keeps buying the stuff. Anderson, a veteran war correspondent and an author of both fiction and nonfiction, gives Lawrence’s story a new spin by contextualizing him in a group biography. He weaves in the lives of three contemporary Middle Eastern spies: Curt Prüfer, a German conspiring with the Ottomans to bring down the British Empire; Aaron Aaronsohn, a Zionist agronomist of Romanian origin, settled in Palestine; and William Yale, an East Coast aristocrat and an agent of Standard Oil who ended up in the service of the American State Department. This allows him to bring in such rousingly modern themes as oil, jihad and Arab-Jewish conflict â€" though each of these was a markedly different prospect a century ago.
On this week’s podcast, Mr. Anderson talks about Lawrence; Brenda Wineapple discusses “Ecstatic Nationâ€; Leonard Marcus on the life and work of Randolph Caldecott; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
