Power, Faith, and Fantasy

When I arrived in Northern Israel during last summer’s war with Hezbollah I met famed military historian Michael Oren on the border under fire where he acted as a spokesman for the IDF Northern Command.
He told me about his forthcoming book Power, Faith, and Fantasy which is now finally available.

It is the first and only book ever written about America’s involvement in the Middle East from the founding of the republic in 1776 to the present.
I haven’t read it yet and can’t vouch for it per se. But if it’s anywhere near as good as his masterful Six Days of War, about the 1967 war where Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories, it should make its way onto your list of required reading.
Oren is unabashedly pro-Israel, but amazingly even one of my Hezbollah readers recommended Six Days of War as a worthwhile read in my comments section a few months ago.
When Oren isn’t meeting with reporters under fire he works at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem with Natan Sharansky, Yossi Klein Halevi, and my intrepid travel buddy Noah Pollak.
I’ll be back with more original reporting from Lebanon on Monday.