Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East - Hardcover

Oren, Michael B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195151747 ISBN 13: 9780195151749

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In Israel and the West it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as "the Setback." Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in West Bank, the intifada and the rise of Palestinian terror: all are part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967.
Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War is the most comprehensive history ever published of this dramatic and pivotal event, the first to explore it both as a military struggle and as a critical episode in the global Cold War. Oren spotlights all the participants--Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American--telling the story of how the war broke out and of the shocking ways it unfolded.
Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities--Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin--that precipitated this earthshaking clash.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“POWERFUL . . . A HIGHLY READABLE, EVEN GRIPPING ACCOUNT OF THE 1967 CONFLICT . . . [Oren] has woven a seamless narrative out of a staggering variety of diplomatic and military strands.”
— The New York Times

“WITH A REMARKABLY ASSURED STYLE, OREN ELUCIDATES NEARLY EVERY ASPECT OF THE CONFLICT . . . Oren’s [book] will remain the authoritative chronicle of the war. His achievement as a writer and a historian is awesome.”
—The Atlantic Monthly

“THIS IS NOT ONLY THE BEST BOOK SO FAR WRITTEN ON THE SIX-DAY WAR, IT IS LIKELY TO REMAIN THE BEST.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“PHENOMENAL . . . BREATHTAKING HISTORY . . .
A PROFOUNDLY TALENTED WRITER . . . .
This book is not only one of the best books on this critical episode in Middle East history; it’s one of the best-written books I’ve read this year, in any genre.”
—The Jerusalem Post

“[In] Michael Oren’s richly detailed and lucid account, the familiar story is thrilling once again. . . . What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A FIRST-RATE NEW ACCOUNT OF THE CONFLICT.”
—The Washington Post

“The definitive history of the Six-Day War . . . [Oren’s] narrative is precise but written with great literary flair. In no one else’s study is there more understanding or more surprise.”
—MARTIN PERETZ, Publisher
The New Republic

“COMPELLING, PERHAPS EVEN VITAL, READING.”
—San Jose Mercury News

From the Inside Flap

Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Michael B. Oren’s magnificent Six Days of War, an internationally acclaimed bestseller, is the first comprehensive account of this epoch-making event.

Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0195151747
• ISBN 13: 9780195151749
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 480