Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Michael B. Oren’s magnificent Six Days of War, an internationally acclaimed bestseller, is the first comprehensive account of this epoch-making event.

Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation.

Customer Reviews:

If You Have Time for Only One Book on the Middle East

By A Customer - May 27, 2002

If you have time for only one book on the Middle East, purchase this book. Much of the current dispute is a result of the events of the 6 Day War. Mr. Oren's work incudes over 80 pages of footnotes, many referencing recently declassified files and personal interviews with the key players.Although packed with information, the book is well edited and a relatively easy read - managing to build suspense although the outcome is well known.No one emerges as a complete hero or a complete villian in Mr. Oren's gripping narrative - a tribute to the balanced, objective nature of the work.After reading this book, the reader will never view current developments in the Middle East in the same light.

Six Days that Shook the World!

By dougrhon "dougrhon" - June 11, 2002

The events of June 1967 have been written about extensively. Never before, however, has a book been published that not only chronicles the six days of the war itself but also the factors which led to it. In this important new work, Michael Oren looks back and comprehensively examines each and every aspect of the conflict. Oren presents the history from a military, diplomatic, political and cultural perspective. Through the extensive examination of archives, official reports, memoirs and interviews with surviving figures, Oren details the roles played by all the major players from the perspective of, not just the Israelis but the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians as well as the United States and the Soviet Union.After beginning by presenting a brief synopsis of the Arab-Israeli conflict to that point, Oren describes the series of miscalculations by Nasser that led Egypt into war several years before he intended. A combination of Syrian bellicosity, support of Palestinian... read more

Best Book on Modern Middle East - Better than Clancy Tales

By Mark D Burgh "Music, Writing, Art, Film, Hist... - June 11, 2002

Michael Oren's book is a gripping account of the Six-Day War, one that is clear from his extensive research, no one wanted. Oren shows the complex issues that moved the Egypt and Israel into a deadly tragedy. Putting the Six-Day War into his vast Cold War context illuminates the impotence of the Superpowers, the incompetence of Egypt and Syria, and the dangerous gamble Israel took when launching its necessary strike. Oren gives us as many perspectives as he can; American, Russian, Israeli, Eqyptian, Jordanian, English participants all have their say. The brilliance of this book is not just Oren's gripping account of the war, but his making the reader understand the incredible pressure that Nasser, King Hussein, and Levi Eshkol were under. This book made me feel some sympathy for the Egyptians, poorly-led, sacrificed to Nasser's macho posturing and cronyism, to Cold war cant, and massive poverty. What is chilling about this book is that nearly forty years later, not much has... read more