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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for The Strong Horse
“The Strong Horse is hard to describe and even harder to put down. Lee Smith has concocted an addictive and original brew of reportage, memoir, and political analysis that casts the Middle East and its relations with the ‘Great Satan’ in a fresh and fascinating light. Writing about his meetings with everyone from Omar Sharif to Natan Sharansky, he delivers one shrewd insight after another. Anyone seeking to understand the world’s most volatile region should read this timely and entertaining book.”
—Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power and War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today
"Lee Smith is a free-thinker in an age of herd mentalities. The Strong Horse is a powerful book—trenchant, shrewd, informed, vivid, provocative, and full of a wisdom that is not the conventional wisdom."
—Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism
“In The Strong Horse, Lee Smith lets readers see beyond the stereotypes by which Western academics have misunderstood, and Western governments have mishandled, the Middle East. Based on wide-ranging conversations in the Arab world as well as on a dispassionate understanding of its intellectual and political history, he shows how the tribal nature of Arab societies combines with Islam to produce a way of life in which force is the ultimate argument. The Strong Horse is a fascinating journey from Cairo’s cafes to the Gulf’s business offices, to Lebanon and Syria’s countryside, and into the region’s seminal literature.”
—Angelo M. Codevilla, Professor emeritus of international relations, Boston University
“Lee Smith is the rarest of Middle East commentators, an observer without any ax to grind, whose book is a hammer shattering many of the blithe pieties about the Middle East that prevail in academia, government, and the media.”
—Peter Theroux, former Director of Persian Gulf Affairs, National Security Council, and author of Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia
“A chronicle of one American’s journey to the Middle East in search of an answer to the question “why 9/11?”, The Strong Horse offers a fascinating depiction of a culture so different from our own that it is a challenge for us to understand just how great this difference is. Lee Smith has faced this challenge, and the insights he offers require nothing less than a radical paradigm shift in American thinking about the Middle East. If we wish to shape history, and not be run over by it, there is no better place to start than by reading Lee Smith’s beautifully crafted and deeply moving journey of discovery.”
—Lee Harris, author of Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West and Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History
“The Strong Horse is hard to describe and even harder to put down. Lee Smith has concocted an addictive and original brew of reportage, memoir, and political analysis that casts the Middle East and its relations with the ‘Great Satan’ in a fresh and fascinating light. Writing about his meetings with everyone from Omar Sharif to Natan Sharansky, he delivers one shrewd insight after another. Anyone seeking to understand the world’s most volatile region should read this timely and entertaining book.”
—Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power and War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today
"Lee Smith is a free-thinker in an age of herd mentalities. The Strong Horse is a powerful book—trenchant, shrewd, informed, vivid, provocative, and full of a wisdom that is not the conventional wisdom."
—Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism
“In The Strong Horse, Lee Smith lets readers see beyond the stereotypes by which Western academics have misunderstood, and Western governments have mishandled, the Middle East. Based on wide-ranging conversations in the Arab world as well as on a dispassionate understanding of its intellectual and political history, he shows how the tribal nature of Arab societies combines with Islam to produce a way of life in which force is the ultimate argument. The Strong Horse is a fascinating journey from Cairo’s cafes to the Gulf’s business offices, to Lebanon and Syria’s countryside, and into the region’s seminal literature.”
—Angelo M. Codevilla, Professor emeritus of international relations, Boston University
“Lee Smith is the rarest of Middle East commentators, an observer without any ax to grind, whose book is a hammer shattering many of the blithe pieties about the Middle East that prevail in academia, government, and the media.”
—Peter Theroux, former Director of Persian Gulf Affairs, National Security Council, and author of Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia
“A chronicle of one American’s journey to the Middle East in search of an answer to the question “why 9/11?”, The Strong Horse offers a fascinating depiction of a culture so different from our own that it is a challenge for us to understand just how great this difference is. Lee Smith has faced this challenge, and the insights he offers require nothing less than a radical paradigm shift in American thinking about the Middle East. If we wish to shape history, and not be run over by it, there is no better place to start than by reading Lee Smith’s beautifully crafted and deeply moving journey of discovery.”
—Lee Harris, author of Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West and Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History
Product Description
In a provocative, timely book, a noted journalist and expert on Arab-American affairs overturns long-held Western myths about the Arab world, and offers a doctrine to help the United States correct its assumptions concerning the region.
Wanting to know why September 11 happened, journalist Lee Smith moved to Cairo. There, he discovered that the standard explanation-a clash of East and West led to the attacks-was simply not the case. As Smith outlines in The Strong Horse, the problems of the Middle East have little to do with Israel, the United States, or the West in general. The strife exists within the Arab world itself.
Through clear-eyed analysis, Smith explodes the many myths permeating Americans' understanding of the Arab world: colonialism spurred the region's ongoing turmoil; Arab liberalism is waiting for U.S. intervention; technology and democracy can be transforming. In response to these untruths, Smith offers what he terms the “Strong Horse Doctrine”-that Arabs want to align themselves with strength, power, and violence. Given America's ongoing interest in the Middle East, Smith says America needs to be the strong horse in order to reclaim its role there, and only by understanding the nature of the region's ancient conflict can we succeed.
Wanting to know why September 11 happened, journalist Lee Smith moved to Cairo. There, he discovered that the standard explanation-a clash of East and West led to the attacks-was simply not the case. As Smith outlines in The Strong Horse, the problems of the Middle East have little to do with Israel, the United States, or the West in general. The strife exists within the Arab world itself.
Through clear-eyed analysis, Smith explodes the many myths permeating Americans' understanding of the Arab world: colonialism spurred the region's ongoing turmoil; Arab liberalism is waiting for U.S. intervention; technology and democracy can be transforming. In response to these untruths, Smith offers what he terms the “Strong Horse Doctrine”-that Arabs want to align themselves with strength, power, and violence. Given America's ongoing interest in the Middle East, Smith says America needs to be the strong horse in order to reclaim its role there, and only by understanding the nature of the region's ancient conflict can we succeed.
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