This is the author's account of fifty years of bloodshed and tragedy in the area from the Palestinian-Israeli bloodbath to the shock and awe of the current war against Iraq. It is a reporter's eyewitness account of the region's history. All the most dangerous men of the past quarter century in the Middle East, from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Saddam to Ariel Sharon, come alive in these pages. In a narrative of blood and mass killing, Fisk tells the story of the growing hatred of the West by millions of Muslims, the West's cynical support for the Middle East's most ruthless dictators and America's ever more powerful military presence in the world's most dangerous lands as well as its uncritical, unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. It is also a story of journalists at war.
