Ronald Florence's Lawrence and Aaronsohn in the New Yorker

The New Yorker, October 29, 2007
Books Briefly Noted

Lawrence and Aaronsohn
by Ronald Florence (Viking; $27.95)

Florence chronicles the birth of the modern Middle East by narrating the intersecting lives of two remarkable men. The portrait of T. E. Lawrence—a deeply British romantic who, despite his talent as a tactician, was unable to deliver on his promises to the Arab fighters he had led during the First World War—is persuasive if not particularly original. Florence is clearly much more taken with the less celebrated Aaron Aaronsohn, a brilliant agronomist instrumental to the survival of early Zionist settlements in Palestine. He became a spy for the British, at great risk to himself and his family. (His sister was tortured by Turkish officers who suspected her, correctly, of assisting in the espionage.) Florence skillfully blends geopolitical history and cloak-and-dagger tales but, regrettably, includes no detailed portrait of any Arab figure; the Arabs serve, instead, to inspire or frustrate the designs of others, whether British, Jewish, or Turkish. ♦

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