Includes bibliographical references (p. 485-490) and index.

Pt. 1. 1900-1918 -- 1. Straws in the Wind -- 2. Getting up Steam -- 3. Something Connected with a Camel -- 4. A Tale of Two Cities -- Pt. 2. 1918-1936 -- 5. Cairo Rose -- 6. Uncharted Territory -- 7. Three Wee Kings of Orient Are -- 8. Stifling Syria -- 9. Stranger than History -- Pt. 3. 1936-1945 -- 10. The Arab Reawakening -- 11. Sideshows of War -- 12. Taking Sides -- Pt. 4. 1945-1960 -- 13. Cold War, Hot Tempers -- 14. Palestine Partitioned -- 15. Coup and Countercoup -- 16. Game Up.

"Sowing the Wind examines the critical political underpinnings of conflict in the Middle East. Keay (known for his best-selling history of India) focuses on the hard-core countries of the Middle East known as the fertile crescent: Egypt, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Keay's account is absolutely riveting as he follows the West's manipulation, management, and mismanagement of the Middle East from 1900 up through the ascent of Arafat to power in the early 1960s. He ends with a forty-page tour-de-force update of the last forty years of American negotiation of economic and political fault lines in the Middle East." "Keay's sweeping history pre-Balfour to post-Suez unearths a host of surprising firsts, from the Gulf's first "gusher" to the first aerial assault on Baghdad, the first of Syria's innumerable coups, and the first terrorist outrages and suicide bombers."--BOOK JACKET.