History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence—that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings… — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
“Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as perhaps you think… — Scott Anderson Copy Share
“He wasn’t sure what to do. If he left the rock, it would only take a few minutes of desert air to dry his pool, and then all that would remain of him would be a small crucible of brown powder, a powder the wind would find and scatter. He wished to stay there, to protect the pool. But after… — Scott Anderson Copy Share
“nothing capable of sustaining an invasion force of any size. But in all this, Aqaba, lying at the very southern end of the” — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
“Better a thousand times the Arab untouched. The foreigners come out here always to teach, whereas they had much better learn.” — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
Waitresses, soldiers, rickshaw drivers, old ladies selling vegetables - my father would schmooze anybody. He was Clintonesque before the word existed. And, of course,… — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World… — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
“Over the course of his wartime service, Lawrence was awarded a number of medals and ribbons, but with his profound disdain for such things, he either threw them away or never bothered to collect them. He made an exception in the case of the Croix de Guerre; after the war, according to his brother, he found amusement in placing the… — Scott Anderson Copy Share
“Part of Sykes's motive was rooted in religiosity. A devout Catholic, he regarded a return of the ancient tribe of Israel to the Holy Land as a way to correct a nearly two-thousand-year-old wrong. That view had taken on new passion and urgency with the massacres of the Armenians. To Sykes, in that ongoing atrocity, the Ottoman Empire had proven… — Scott Anderson Copy Share
“Initial euphoria would give way to shock, shock to horror, and then, as the killing dragged on with no end in sight, horror to… — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
If wells are constructed right and operated right, hydraulic fracturing will not cause a problem. … Our natural gas supplies would plummet precipitously without… — Scott Anderson Copy Share Image
“mold—William Henry Yale also subscribed to Roosevelt’s notions of the ideal American man and of the dangers of “over-civilization,” code for effeminacy. The true man, in this worldview, was a rugged individualist, physically fit as well as intellectually cultured, as equally at home leading men into battle or shooting big game on the prairie as chatting with the ladies in… — Scott Anderson Copy Share
