Review Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace

[AWP]

1/3 into the book, I'm only starting this thread as a bookmark for a particular passage before I keep reading. I'll follow up as I finish the book. Emphasis is mine.

"Zawahiri founded the organization Islamic Jihad, which merged with al-Qaeda. After bin Laden's assassination in 2011, Zawahiri became the leader of al-Qaeda. Little did the British agents who hoped the Muslim Brotherhood might help them overthrow Nasser in the 1950s realize what the men they were dealing with would do in the future."

For some reason, that wording bothers me...

 

[Kraut783]

Yeah, makes it seem like it was a bad thing….

 

[Gunz]

That shows you where the author's head is at. I think that would be enough for me to launch the book into the trash bin.

 

[AWP]

That shows you where the author's head is at. I think that would be enough for me to launch the book into the trash bin.


ETA: The author is a 46-year-old woman with blue hair and tattoos who once wrote a screenplay about Churchill of which noted Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts said: "Ms. von Tunzelmann—who once had a column in The Guardian that attacked movies for their historical errors—has twisted the truth about Churchill and D-Day in a truly repulsive way"

So far she's framed the rush to the Suez crisis as... Eden and France had a hard on for Nasser. She's given favorable treatment to Eisenhower, Nasser, and the Hungarian revolution. The line I quoted above was really the first thing in the book that made me take notice. I haven't noticed any clear cut bias towards a person, nation, or idea.

 

[Marauder06]

1/3 into the book, I'm only starting this thread as a bookmark for a particular passage before I keep reading. I'll follow up as I finish the book. Emphasis is mine.



For some reason, that wording bothers me...

"Assassination" is an interesting way to phrase it. I would have used "killing," "elimination," or "death of" instead.

But I also recall seeing the term used (IMO, also incorrectly) to describe the way we got ADM Isoroku Yamamoto during WWII.