[Cicero]

Excellent posts. I knew something about the Arabists from my reading (not just the current news, but Talbot Munday's old romances, for example, and Percival Christopher Wrenn) but I never ran across this book.

What this review suggests is that maybe we need a third generation in the State Department. The Peace Processors replaced the Arabists, and now they need to be replaced too, ASAP. No doubt Martin Indyk is better than some sand-mad romantic from the Victorian age, but he hasn't done such a great job.

[expatpat]

Wow, you brought back a strong surge of Nostalgia, mentioning P. C. Wrenn, who I used to read as a boy. But, weren't his books more extolling the Brits than the Arabs? That's just a feeling left from books read many years ago, so I could easily be wrong.

[SJackson]

ping