With Lawrence in Arabia

Lowell Thomas arrived in the Middle East in 1917 as a young journalist seeking adventure. What he found was T.E. Lawrence, a brilliant, contradictory English officer who had somehow united fractious Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire. Thomas traveled with Lawrence through the desert, photographed the raids and battles, and witnessed firsthand the strange alchemy of a scholar-turned-guerrilla-commander who inspired both devotion and unease. This book is his eyewitness account: camel charges across sun-scorched dunes, explosives detonated on the Hejaz railway, the capture of Aqaba by a daring coastal march that changed the war's trajectory. But Thomas also saw past the legend to the man beneath: Lawrence conflicted about his own role in shaping a nation that might never be his to shape. Written with the verve of a pulp adventure but grounded in immediate experience, this is the original source material for the Lawrence of Arabia myth, and a fascinating portrait of how legends are made in wartime.