As Oren explains in his introduction “America is deeply, substantively, and perhaps even existentially involved in the Middle East.” Most people, however, would think that America’s involvement began with the creation of Israel in 1948, or with the Suez Crisis of 1956, or even with the Oil Embargo if 1973. What Power, Faith, and Fantasy now demonstrates is that the roots of our engagement run much deeper: the United States actually fought its first international war against Arabic-speaking Muslims, and the region was so important at the turn of the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson declared the Middle East to be his main overseas concern. Not only did George Washington have a policy on the region, but also our early conflicts in the Middle East played a critical role in shaping of the American Constitution. Moreover, the great icons of American literature and culture, including Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, took fundamental inspiration from this seemingly strange and alien land. Despite this legacy, most Americans remain largely ignorant of the ways our country has been continuously intertwined with the region for over two centuries.

Drawing on government documents, thousands of classified papers, and the memoirs of merchants, missionaries, and travelers, as well as personal correspondence, Oren seeks to fill this gap in our collective knowledge by reconstructing the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with this alluring and often hostile region. With “a novelist’s flair” (Wall Street Journal, on Six Days of War), Oren tells the remarkable stories of those Americans, whether drawn by the temptation of adventure, glory, profit, or the missionary ideal, who journeyed to the Middle East to try and modernize, convert, organize, and learn from its peoples. Through these narratives -- including such remarkable figures as John Ledyard, the first American to journey to the Middle Easy, and Mark Twain, whose memoirs of his travels helped launch his career -- Oren displays the myriad of ways in which we have impacted the region and, in many respects, how we have been unalterably changed in the process.

The Yom Kippur War and the War in Lebanon, the Intifada and the rise of Palestinian terror, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, the peace process—all resulted from six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in June 1967. The Six-Day War, as it is widely known, was totally unique in history. Never has a conflict so short, yielded such profound and far-reaching results. Seldom has a war, unforeseen and mostly unwanted, concluded so astonishingly.

Six Days of War is the first comprehensive study of this towering historical event, the first to explore both its military and diplomatic dimensions, and to spotlight all its participants: Arab, Israeli, Soviet and American. It tells the story of why the war broke out and the shocking ways it unfolded.

Drawing on thousands of formerly 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.

Great events and characters combine in this sweeping and singularly engaging narrative. An invaluable resource for students of modern history and international affairs, of Israel and the Arab world, Six Days of War is essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of the Middle East conflict today.