THE WHITE NILE

Moorehead, Alan

Published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1962

Clean and secure in original brown cloth binding in very good dustjacket. With map-illustrated endpapers, a photographic frontispiece, one multi-panel folding map, and various other photographs, reproductions and maps as plates and in the text. The author's celebrated history of the minor of the two main tributaries of the Nile, with a printed dedication to Freya Stark. Moorehead published a similar book on the second tributary entitled 'The Blue Nile' two years later. Alan McCrae Moorehead (1910-1983) was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably his two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile. The White Nile tells of the daring exploration of the Nile River in the second half of the 19th century, which was at that time the most mysterious and impenetrable region on earth. The author captures the larger-than-life personalities of such notable figures as Stanley, Livingstone, Burton, and many others, and examines the results of their discoveries: the building of the Suez Canal; the Khedive Ismail's appointment of Gordon as Governor-General of Sudan; and the story of the last days of Khartoum. The book concludes with Kitchener's military success at Omdurman. Though not marked as such, this book comes from the collection of Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (1916 - 2000), the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a career intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services and was the mastermind of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup against Iran's democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh administration, and returned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to Iran's Peacock Throne in August 1953 for the purpose of returning Western control of Middle Eastern oil supplies. Assigned to Egypt, Roosevelt impressed his colleagues with Project FF, which encouraged the Free Officers Movement to carry out a coup d'état in 1952, and Roosevelt developed close CIA links to the new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. In Egypt under Allen Dulles, Kim Roosevelt supervised the CIA's operation to undermine the popular General Neguib and encourage the rise to power of Gamul Abdul Nasser. Even before his decisive victory, Nasser was communicating through Roosevelt to make a settlement with Great Britain. These back channel negotiations eventually produced the treaty signed in October 1954. Hugh Wilford: "[Roosevelt Jr.] had this notion of America forming an alliance with the Arab countries as they emerged from under the sway of Britain and France. He was very concerned with backing Arab nationalists in the region. He saw that as the best way of keeping it within the American orbit, as the Cold War was gathering momentum." The Eisenhower administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was initially quite sympathetic towards the Arabist agenda of Roosevelt's and his colleagues and willing to oppose Middle Eastern regimes seen "as backing the Soviet Union rather than the U.S." In discussing Roosevelt's role, Wilford describes him as being among "the most important intelligence officers of their generation in the Middle East.". Seller Inventory # 45090

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE WHITE NILE
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, London
Publication Date: 1962
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition; Sixth Printing.