The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, “a sideshow of a sideshow” – a conflict shaped by a small handful of adventurers far removed from the corridors of power. At the center of it all was Lawrence himself. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in Syria; by 1917 he was riding into legend at the head of an Arab army while fighting a rearguard action against his own government’s imperial ambitions.

Based on four years of extensive primary document research, Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns the received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed.