Hero, Michael Korda

This is a great, great biography of Lawrence of Arabia. I not only got to know Lawrence but also a lot of the root causes of conflicts in the Middle East at the moment, since he helped create the map (and he wanted it to look very different than it does). The book dips heavily into psychology -- did Lawrence never date because he was gay or because he was afraid of his mother? -- which bugged me a little bit, but mostly Korda uses those passages to refute other biographers who claim really stupid things about Lawrence. Korda, on the other hand, is so desperately in love with Lawrence that it made me laugh out loud every now and then. (And there should be a warning for the rape and later kinky sex chapters, but I guess we don't warn for real life.)

Grade: B

Originally posted in 2011