Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East
by Thomas Lippman

352 pages with Bibliography, Index and 16 pages of glossy Black-and-White photographs
6" by 9", Cloth-bound
ISBN: 978-0-9701157-2-0
Release date: September 2008
Selwa Press 2008
Price: US $25.95
 

Now available, the long-awaited biography of an extraordinary, but unheralded, Marine officer by one of the nation’s leading experts on the Middle East.
As George Crile used Charlie Wilson to examine CIA involvement in Afghanistan, Tom Lippman has used the astonishing life of Bill Eddy to trace the rise of American involvement in the region - from a handshake between FDR and Ibn Saud on the deck of an American cruiser in 1945 to the first Marine landing in Lebanon in 1958, where as one observer noted, “Pepsi and 7-Up umbrellas on the beaches sheltered vendors who prayed that fresh waves of Marines would land.”

Fascinating in its detail and sweeping in its scope, Arabian Knight is the rare book that fuses biography and political history into a compelling, enlightening read. It is the story of a warrior, a scholar, a spymaster and a diplomat. It is the story of Colonel Bill Eddy, a Marine for all seasons.

REVIEWS

Author and journalist Don DeNevi writes in the Quantico Sentry

‘‘Arabian Knight” is a priceless gem among recent military biographies. Small and easily read because Lippman’s prose is at once taut and graceful, the book should be read for its mixture of 20th century history and current Middle Eastern insights by all professionally minded Marines, regardless of rank.