From Publishers Weekly
An astute, dramatic biography that also serves as a political history of the Middle East power game, Dallas's book is a gripping portrait of the highly paradoxical king of Jordan, who died of cancer last February. Hussein was a strong man, writes Dallas, who "ran a quasi-democracy." Though a friend of the West, Hussein had more amicable relations with fiercely anti-American Islamists than did the leaders of other Arab countries. Dallas, editor of the London-based Foreign Report newsletter, shows that Hussein's embattled regime (launched in 1953 when the 18-year-old prince took the reins of power from his schizophrenic, incapacitated father) was propped up not only by the U.S. and Britain but also by Israel, which indirectly came to Hussein's rescue time and again, viewing the king, moderate by the region's standards, as a buffer to Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Like his grandfather, King Abdullah, who was assassinated by a Muslim extremist in Jerusalem in 1951, King Hussein kept channels open with Israel through clandestine meetings beginning in 1963. While Dallas covers Hussein's relations with Israel (always more cordial than Israel's relations with its other Arab neighbors, even after the 1967 war in which Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan), the book is more interesting for the light it sheds on conflict among the ArabsAespecially the strife between the king and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who, after 1967, set up a Palestinian state-within-a-state in Jordan. Ultimately, Dallas concludes that the king was "a man of substance who had lessons to impart" about the virtues of moderation in an immoderate region of the world. Maps, photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Although there have been other biographies of King Hussein (e.g., James D. Lunt's Hussein: A Political Biography, 1989), this is the first since his death last February. Dallas, editor of the London-based Foreign Report, offers a comprehensive analysis of Hussein's remarkable 46-year reign. Hussein became king at 18 and through skill, luck, and well-placed friends managed to survive assassination and coup attempts as he searched for a leadership role in the Arab world. He was, Dallas argues, a political realistAfor years he held clandestine meetings with the Israelis, for example. A benevolent strongman in the domestic arena, he never ceded power to anyone; 55 governments came and went during his reign. His personal life was equally eventfulAhe had four marriages (the last to American Lisa Halaby). This is a clearly written, objective, and focused account of Hussein's complex life; Dallas manages to explain Hussein's reign from Hussein's point of view (though a bibliography would have been useful). Recommended for all libraries.ARuth K. Baacke, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
