Lee Smithis a senior editor atTheWeekly Standard.He has written forSlate,theNew York Times,theBoston Globe,theNew Republic,as well as fora variety of major Arab media outlets. He is also a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute and the author ofThe Strong Horse- Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. A native of New York, he currently resides in Washington, DC.
“Succinct and accessible. . . . An important read for anyone
interested in the Middle East.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Masterful. . . . A unique and vital addition to the current debate
on the Middle East.”
—The Jerusalem Post
“In-depth. . . . Provocative. . . . Worth a few evenings of serious
reading. . . . “Smith writes clearly and tersely, and his respect
and affection for his Arab friends in the Middle East come through
clearly.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“[Smith] treats us to beautifully written portraits of his Arab
friends, individuals who illustrate far better than finely wrought
theory the difficulties of practical reform.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Lively. . . . Illuminating. . . . An amalgam of travel journalism,
memoir, popular history, and policy-musing. . . . The Strong Horse
avoids policy prescriptions—a dime a dozen in books about the
Middle East—and instead relies on a series of sharply observed
episodes, deftly arranged to demonstrate a civilization in
perpetual crisis.”
—Commentary
“[Smith] has drawn some interesting—and in some respects
encouraging—conclusions in this fascinating, complicated, eloquent
study. . . . [He] makes a compelling case that the United States
must understand the ancient conflicts and enmities that animate the
Arabs, but must also understand that America, alone among world
powers, is uniquely qualified to guide the Arab world out of its
troubled past. . . . This is a plea, in effect, for confident,
assertive American leadership in the Arab Middle East.”
—The Weekly Standard
“Excellent. . . . An entertaining yet deep and important analysis.
. . . Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool
to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist
attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else.” —Daniel Pipes,
National Review
“Fascinating. . . . [Smith] should be lauded for his commitment and
careful research. The book is compelling, well written and worth a
read even—or perhaps especially—by those who would disagree with
the author.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A bold and significant book that refreshingly rejects the
conventional wisdom about the Middle East.”
—Reason Magazine
“The arguments put forward [by Smith] are desperately needed as an
antidote to the lock step shibboleths and conventional wisdom that
form the basis of much of the scholarship of U. S. Middle East
studies. Much of the conventional wisdom that forms the basis of
our understanding of the Arab world is challenged here, and rightly
so.”
—American Diplomacy
“Blunt. . . . Bracing. . . . Helps to puncture the naïveté of the
anti-American Left, liberal internationalists, and
prodemocratization conservatives.”
—Claremont Review of Books
“The Strong Horse is hard to describe and even harder to put down.
Lee Smith has concocted an addictive and original brew of
reportage, memoir, and political analysis that casts the Middle
East and its relations with the ‘Great Satan’ in a fresh and
fascinating light. Writing about his meetings with everyone from
Omar Sharif to Natan Sharansky, he delivers one shrewd insight
after another. Anyone seeking to understand the world’s most
volatile region should read this timely and entertaining book.”
—Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Savage
Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power and War
Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to
Today
"Lee Smith is a free-thinker in an age of herd mentalities. The
Strong Horse is a powerful book—trenchant, shrewd, informed, vivid,
provocative, and full of a wisdom that is not the conventional
wisdom."
—Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism
“In The Strong Horse, Lee Smith lets readers see beyond the
stereotypes by which Western academics have misunderstood, and
Western governments have mishandled, the Middle East. Based on
wide-ranging conversations in the Arab world as well as on a
dispassionate understanding of its intellectual and political
history, he shows how the tribal nature of Arab societies combines
with Islam to produce a way of life in which force is the ultimate
argument. The Strong Horse is a fascinating journey
from Cairo’s cafes to the Gulf’s business offices,
to Lebanon and Syria’s countryside, and into the
region’s seminal literature.”
—Angelo M. Codevilla, Professor emeritus of
international relations, Boston University
“Lee Smith is the rarest of Middle East commentators, an
observer without any ax to grind, whose book is a hammer shattering
many of the blithe pieties about the Middle East that prevail in
academia, government, and the media.”
—Peter Theroux, former Director of Persian Gulf Affairs, National
Security Council, and author of Sandstorms: Days and Nights in
Arabia
“A chronicle of one American’s journey to the Middle East in search
of an answer to the question “why 9/11?”, The Strong Horse
offers a fascinating depiction of a culture so different from our
own that it is a challenge for us to understand just how great this
difference is. Lee Smith has faced this challenge, and the insights
he offers require nothing less than a radical paradigm shift in
American thinking about the Middle East. If we wish to shape
history, and not be run over by it, there is no better place to
start than by reading Lee Smith’s beautifully crafted and deeply
moving journey of discovery.”
—Lee Harris, author of Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to
the West and Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of
History
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