The publication of Six Days of War in 2002 marked the emergence of Michael B. Oren as one of America’s leading historians. The book won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History and apeared on The New York Times bestseller list for many weeks. Though American publishers have issued a staggering number of books on the Middle East over the past few years, Oren’s ambitious new work, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present, is the first to tell the history of America in the Middle East from the Founding Fathers to the present day in one volume.

As Oren explains in his introduction “America is deeply, substantively, and perhaps even existentially involved in the Middle East.” Most people, however, would think that America’s involvement began with the creation of Israel in 1948, or with the Suez Crisis of 1956, or even with the Oil Embargo if 1973. What Power, Faith, and Fantasy now demonstrates is that the roots of our engagement run much deeper: the United States actually fought its first international war against Arabic-speaking Muslims, and the region was so important at the turn of the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson declared the Middle East to be his main overseas concern. Not only did George Washington have a policy on the region, but also our early conflicts in the Middle East played a critical role in shaping of the American Constitution. Moreover, the great icons of American literature and culture, including Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, took fundamental inspiration from this seemingly strange and alien land. Despite this legacy, most Americans remain largely ignorant of the ways our country has been continuously intertwined with the region for over two centuries.

Drawing on government documents, thousands of classified papers, and the memoirs of merchants, missionaries, and travelers, as well as personal correspondence, Oren seeks to fill this gap in our collective knowledge by reconstructing the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with this alluring and often hostile region. With “a novelist’s flair” (Wall Street Journal, on Six Days of War), Oren tells the remarkable stories of those Americans, whether drawn by the temptation of adventure, glory, profit, or the missionary ideal, who journeyed to the Middle East to try and modernize, convert, organize, and learn from its peoples. Through these narratives -- including such remarkable figures as John Ledyard, the first American to journey to the Middle Easy, and Mark Twain, whose memoirs of his travels helped launch his career -- Oren displays the myriad of ways in which we have impacted the region and, in many respects, how we have been unalterably changed in the process.

Oren is particularly renowned for his exhaustive historical research. In reviewing Six Days of War, the Wall Street Journal wrote that Oren’s “meticulous research cuts through the propagandized histories on all sides.” The New York Times Book Review declared “what makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research,” and Atlantic Monthly asserted “Oren’s book will remain the authoritative chronicle of the war. His achievement as a writer and a historian is awesome.” For this new book, his scholarship in domestic and international archives (Oren is fluent in English, Arabic, and Hebrew) is authoritative.

In Power, Faith, and Fantasy, Oren follows three critical threads. The first, Power, is undoubtedly the most familiar to Americans today. Oren deftly uncovers the military and economic power that has determined the fate of the region since the 18th century, but he also reveals the more subtle forms of cultural and intellectual power at play.

The second major theme is the way Faith -- what Oren calls an “irrepressible energy that both shaped and fueled America’s Middle Eastern involvement” – has played an equally historic role. Here he tells the story of American missionaries of all denominations, eager to convert the citizens of Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco to Christianity, but also successful in introducing new ideas about health care, human rights, and social equality.

The third critical idea is the transcendent effect of Fantasy. Some of our greatest literary and cultural heroes, from Melville and Twain, to Lowell Thomas and T. E. Lawrence -- and even fictional characters like Indiana Jones -- have taken cues from the Bible, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and other historic works that have inspired incredible legends and myths in the Western mind. Throughout Power, Faith, and Fantasy, Oren investigates how Americans have used the region as a backdrop for innumerable plays, movies, and novels, and he explores what, exactly, about the Middle East has proven so seductive and captivating to Americans for the past 230 years.

With startling revelations about a broad pageant of historical characters, from early American explorers who probed the sources of Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, Oren’s new book will prove the definitive volume on this long and tortuous history. Masterfully narrated and compellingly told, and illustrated with over 70 images, portraits, and maps, Power, Faith, and Fantasy is deeply original work by one of our finest historians and is indispensable for anyone interested in understanding the roots of America’s Middle East involvement today

Back To Top