cover image Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East

Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East

Jeremy Bowen. Thomas Dunne Books, $29.95 (420pp) ISBN 978-0-312-33864-0

This thoroughly sound and readable history of the Six-Day War that found Israel victorious over the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria offers a valuable perspective on a conflict that is receding into history, though its consequences, in terms of the explosive situation in the Middle East, are still with us. The author, a seasoned BBC Middle East expert, will not please the militantly Zionist reader, but likewise holds little esteem for the posturing and military ineptness of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser, whose actions both provoked the war and made its consequences so disastrous for the Arab world. At the same time, Bowen provides a good overview of the roots of the Israelis' case of ""victory disease,"" which, he says, led them to their own set of political and military miscalculations, the Yom Kippur War and the ongoing aftermath. Ultimately, the book is an effort to strike a balance between the Egyptian diving out of his burning tank and the Israeli pilot who set it on fire in the first place, and the extensive interviewing on both sides is one of the author's major tools in striking that balance. With its strong focus on the political aspect of the war, rather than on the military side of things, this engaging account should appeal to anyone remotely interested in tracing the roots of the tensions in the Middle East.