Eveland, Wilbur Crane. Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980. 382 pages.

Eveland spent much of his adult life in the Middle East or working in Washington for the government as a Middle East specialist. Beginning in the late 1940s, he worked at various times for or with the State Department, the National Security Council, and the CIA.

This book provides a history of Middle-East politics and the U.S. involvement in same from post-World War One to the 1970s. Written as a personal account, the book is very readable and contains a number of significant revelations, such as U.S. plots to overthrow the government of Syria in 1956 and 1957 and to assassinate President Nasser of Egypt, as well as American involvement in several other conspiracies, alone and with the British, to fashion the Middle East to their own specifications.

There is also material on covert Arab-Israeli relations, the CIA overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, and on British mole Kim Philby, with whom Eveland spent time in Lebanon right up until Philby avoided arrest by fleeing to the Soviet Union.

-- William Blum
ISBN 0-393-01336-7

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