**One of the Best Books of the Year:

**One of the Best Books of the Year:

• The Christian Science Monitor

NPR

The Seattle Times

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Chicago TribuneA New York Times *Notable BookFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography**The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T. E. Lawrence, "a sideshow of a sideshow." As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers 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 as he fought a rearguard action against his own government and its imperial ambitions. Based on four years of intensive primary document research,* Lawrence in Arabia * definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed.