In Christopher Sykes' 1959 biography of Orde Wingate, he uncovered Wingate's harsh criticism of T.E. Lawrence. Both Lawrence and Wingate were twentieth-century British officers who favored 'irregular warfare.' Their campaigns in the First and Second World Wars would influence future generations of military leaders, and the ways in which modern armies organize their forces.

Though separated by more than twenty years and two continents, the campaigning 'styles' of Lawrence and Wingate shared some similar features. Both wielded small numbers of men, and avoided sustained combat against larger rival forces. Both took exceptional personal risks. Both fought in foreign lands, and at the head of largely foreign soldiers.

The similarities between the two officers are clear, but the specifics of Wingate's criticisms are not quite as easily discernible. (Besides the Sykes biography, the two best sources for understanding Wingate's critique of Lawrence are two of his Abyssinian soldiers that followed him from Palestine: the officer Anthony 'Tony' Simmonds and the Jewish-Palestinian clerk Avram Akavia.) In his desert campaigns during the First World War, Lawrence had used British money to hire Arab tribesman to conduct irregular warfare against the Ottoman Empire. In Abyssinia in 1940, Wingate sought to use soldiers loyal to the British Empire to inspire Abyssinian 'patriot' forces to rally by his side; Wingate wanted to avoid direct payment and direct distribution of arms. Lawrence appealed to Bedouin patriotism, but he did so with a sense of irony and bemusement: nationalism, he thought, was a paltry motivation for the Bedouin, whereas British gold and war-time honor could provided more effective incentives. Wingate viewed Lawrence's approach as too close to bribery; Wingate wanted to appeal to patriotism and pride, and refused to allow direct payments to Abyssinian militia leaders or their followers.

The puzzling aspect of Wingate's critique is that, despite their technical differences, it seems as if Lawrence still could have served as an advantageous and famous model of successful irregular warfare, thus inspiring Wingate's commanders to devote further resources to his campaign; and Wingate, if nothing else, was obsessed with clawing for more resources. In fact, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell plainly states that Lawrence's previous efforts in WW1 directly influenced Wavell's deployment of Wingate in WW2 (see The Good Soldier, 1948). But instead of substantiating an ostensibly favorable comparison, Wingate denigrated Lawrence's methods as wasteful and ineffective. Why?

First, I want to avoid rarifying 'denigration.' ​Denigration occurs in everyday life on a regular basis. In front of spouses, friends, and partners, human beings denigrate potential rivals to sculpt their own status position relative to that of the rival. Some typical, casual examples include: "He's not that good of a writer." "If only her talent could keep pace with his ambition." "She's pretty, but she doesn't have taste." Denigration occurs for other reasons, however, besides rivalry for status. Other possibilities include 1) a genuine disagreement about strategy 2) Jealousy. 

I think that rivalry over status is the best answer. It doesn't matter that Lawrence was dead; rivalry is not a 'reasonable' thing. It's a basic mechanism that propels us unwittingly forward. It often happens subconsciously, and rarely needs to justify itself. ​

Wingate, however, was a pensive officer, and he was the sort that would search-out a basis for his feelings about Lawrence. I think it's likely that Wingate not only disliked Lawrence's 'methods,' but found fault with Lawrence's personal conduct during military operations. In particular, Wingate probably felt that Lawrence had abdicated his personal responsibilities as an officer to play too-much the desert warrior.

A quick comparison of the two men can highlight their differences in outlook: Whereas Wingate was a career-oriented soldier, Lawrence was an amateur officer. Wingate never lost any family members to war, but Lawrence lost two brothers before embarking on the campaign to take Aqaba. Wingate preferred leading professional soldiers on well-organized campaigns; Lawrence had a respectful but difficult relationship with professional soldiers, and preferred fighting alongside loose bands of Arab raiders. Wingate directed and orchestrated violence in the traditional manner of an officer, whereas Lawrence preferred hands-on violence in the style of a medieval knight (and hated/loved himself for it).
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​There are no records of Wingate actually shooting an enemy in combat--he was too busy maintaining his erratic supply line and keeping his troops on a relentless march. Lawrence, however, fired his weapon often, and preferred the emotional rush of battle to the more mundane tasks typically required of officers in combat. Lawrence's emphasis on action, in Wingate's view, was an abdication of responsibility. 

Lawrence, I think it's fair to say, had a much better nose for politics, bureaucratic maneuvering, and power. He could also express his thoughts clearly, eloquently, and in an interesting way. But despite his clear talent for political life, Lawrence prioritized his efforts in the second-half of the First World War towards hands-on participation in violence. His own memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and his letters from that time period show a keen awareness of the ongoing political situation in the Levant. But those same sources also point to the fact that Lawrence was more interested in being involved in raids and ambushes.

Wingate seems to have noticed the peculiarities of Lawrence's behavior as an officer, and he also noticed that Lawrence used direct payment because this was Lawrence's easiest and quickest way to get rid of the resources the British Empire offered him, thereby freeing Lawrence to charge back into the mix on personal terms.

Only once Lawrence was in Damascus did he refocus his energies towards politics; but at that point, it was too late. The Arab forces that he had he supplied and fought with lacked the hierarchical structure and discipline necessary to successfully occupy and manage a city. Lawrence also did not concern himself with the legitimacy of his occupation of Damascus, or how it would be perceived by the locals. (I am not saying that the British Army's occupation of Damascus was legitimate; I am just pointing out that they were better prepared for it.)

Wingate had a bold imagination, and he was unusually lucky in his guesses on how things would turn out. But his writings betray a lack of specificity and accurate knowledge of human behavior. He was very smart, energetic, and imaginative--but he was not as accurate or precise of an observer of human political behavior as Lawrence. Wingate did, however, simply care more about politics: he took steps at every juncture of his planning to build working, useful coalitions. And Wingate bothered to make assessments about whether or not his plans gelled with the local political situation in the Sudan, Palestine, Abyssinia, and Burma. That's not to say that Wingate was a purely strategic animal: like most generals, his goal was not to win the war, but to ensure that his campaign succeeded. The terms of a success in a campaign can be objectively measurable, even if they are also objectively pointless from a wider perspective. Wingate was perfectly comfortable with that paradox; Lawrence tried (and failed) to ignore it, which led to a crises of consciousness for the rest of his life, and to his writing of a Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir seeped in self-searching and unrest.

I think Wingate deserves some credit for his reading of Lawrence's outlook on military affairs. While Lawrence did not deserve the harsh disparagement that he received from Wingate, Wingate did notice Lawrence's unusual motives for war. And he probably saw that Lawrence's personal motives diverged from those of career soldiers and politicians.

​From a distance, the tactical approaches of Wingate and Lawrence still resemble one another. They rode similar horses towards similar objectives, but they rode for different reasons, and these differences materially affected the lives of their men, the results of their campaigns, and their own self-regard at each step of the journey.

Wavell, Archibald. Allenby: A Study in Greatness, George G. Harrap & Co. (Vol. 1 1940; Vol. II 1943.)

 The life of Edmund Allenby, a soldier and a statesman, in many ways anticipated the trials of his first biographer, Archibald Wavell. Born of "old-rooted English stock," Allenby grew into a tall, barrel-chested young cavalry officer. He served among the first generation of officers in which attendance at Staff College, rather than purchase, ensured promotion. He loved literature, the outdoors, and hunting; his letters to his wife rarely depict warfare, but often mention nature. Allenby's first  experience in a contest of arms occurred during the Boer War of 1899-1902. He served ably, but more importantly he developed connections with the soldiers who later became the key officers of the First World War. Such connections helped ensure his promotion through the ranks. When the Great War began he immediately assumed command of a division of cavalry as a major-general. But the weight of command transformed his personality, so that an "easy-going young officer and a good-humoured squadron leader [became] a strict colonel, an irascible brigadier, and an explosive general." Out of fear and resentment, his men coined him "The Bull." The early years of the First World War cemented his reputation, as thousands of men died under Allenby's command as he bluntly executed orders from above. The year 1917 proved particularly fateful. Allenby began the year with serious losses at the Battle of Arrass, removal from the Western front, and the loss of his only son to German artillery shells; Allenby ended the year in the Middle East with the conquest of Jerusalem. The next year, he conquered Damascus. Given fresh resources and a weakened enemy, Allenby commanded one of the most decisive and efficient campaigns in the history of modern warfare as he swept up the Mediterranean coast and destroyed the Ottoman Empire. His relentless energy provided the Egyptian Expeditionary Force with the necessary momentum to decisively defeat the enemy.

 T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom gives a far more heroic portrait of Allenby than Wavell does here; in fact, Wavell goes to great lengths to temper Lawrence's praise with a sober assessment of Allenby's flaws: his zeal for rules, loyalty, and unquestioned service. Wavell writes with praise, and yet a subtle sense of irony creeps into the biography, as though Wavell no longer believes in greatness. While it lacks the humor of some of Wavell's other works, the book sustains interest as a surprisingly impersonal reflection on Wavell's views of military and civilian leadership.

Archibald Wavell (Field Marshal, Viscount, and Viceroy of India) published his two volume biography of Field Marshall Edmund Allenby in the midst of his own challenges. Wavell served under Allenby in the First World War as a liaison and a staff officer with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. As Wavell finished the first volume of the biography, he served as Commander in Chief in the Middle East, a status similar to the command Allenby once held. As Wavell finished the second volume, he held the Viceroyalty of India, a status somewhat greater than Allenby's eventual post of High Commissioner of Egypt and the Sudan.

Ever since Basil Liddel Hart's glowing statements on T.E. Lawrence strategic genius, Lawrence's reputation has centered on his military accomplishments, rather than his achievements in art. This is a mistake. 

Orde Wingate despised Lawrence's record as a war-leader, possibly because Wingate recognized something of his own failings in Lawrence. But Wingate also felt that Lawrence abdicated his personal responsibilities as an officer to play too much the desert warrior. There are no records of Wingate actually shooting an enemy in combat--he was too busy maintaining his supply line and keeping his troops on the march. Lawrence fired his weapon often, and preferred the emotional rush of battle to the more mundane tasks typically required of officers in combat. Lawrence's emphasis on action, in Wingate's view, was an abdication of responsibility. 

Lawrence's campaigns are often held up as a positive example of irregular warfare, and as a better way of fighting than what soldiers faced in the trenches of the First World War. Lawrence himself was not so sure that he was actually preserving life, or winning battles more efficiently. The numbers, in fact, indicate that he lost men at a higher rate than most British units that faced action on the Western front. This is not surprising. State control and industrial efficiency seems to reduce  casualties, either because men lose their willingness to die as a mere part of a 'machine' rather than as an individual warrior, or else because industrial society provides soldiers with better access to medicine and stable rations. State control also increases the number of prisoners taken, and reduces the number of prisoners slaughtered. 

British methods of warfare and 'state control' might outright reduce the 'proportion' of people who die violently. Lawrence noticed this, which explains why he heaps praise upon Allenby above and beyond any other soldier in the First World War, and why he denigrates Allenby's rival commanders not as butchers, but as unimaginative sticks-in-the-mud. 

So why does Lawrence seem attracted to desert warfare? His writings indicate that he appreciated the straightforward human practicality of 'desert' warfare. Yes, the violence in the desert was terrible, but it was coupled with a familiarity, a spirit of adventure, and a sense of honor that Lawrence never felt while working for the British military in Cairo prior to his desert campaigns. 

The Arab 'irregulars' that fought beside Lawrence risked hearth and home in an immediate way. More than one of Lawrence's fighters, in fact, saw their homes destroyed by the Turks in retaliation for joining with the Arab revolt. More than one Arab also saw his village destroyed, and his family annihilated, during the panicked Turkish retreats from Palestine and western Jordan. And so the Arabs often risked not only their lives, but their families and tribes to fight the Turks--and sometimes each other. The Arab revolt involved a type of warfare that was less organized in the sense of mass bureaucracy and written protocol, and yet no less sophisticated in its nuance and complexity. 

And so Lawrence wrestles with the following, implicit idea throughout Seven Pillars of Wisdom: He senses that the Arab way of war is more virtuous, honorable, and personally fulfilling than the sort of violence that destroyed the lives of his friends and brothers along the European Western Front. But given that Lawrence knows the superiority of British warfare for battlefield outcomes (Lawrence always suspects the British will emerge triumphant), is it morally acceptable for him to dabble in Arab nationalism and 'desert warfare'? Lawrence believes that Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia rightfully belong to the Arabs--but he is a student of history, and knows that even as he props up a certain brand of Arab nationalism, he is setting in motion a thousand difficulties for hundreds of extant ethnic and religious groups living in the same region.

Throughout Seven Pillars Lawrence examines his conscience, and recognizes that ultimately he has fought this war to satisfy his own peculiar appetite for violence, warfare, and chivalry. Many of his Arab friends admire him for it, but he considers himself a sham. The Arab irregulars, in Lawrence's eyes, live with the virtues of the desert; but he, their leader, merely wears the costume--he possesses the heart, but not the mind.

The Arabs who followed Lawrence died at tremendous rates--nearly sixty of Lawrence's two-hundred personal bodyguards perished within a year. Their villages burned. Their children and wives lived unprotected, and hungry. 

The European powers, on the other hand, featured stronger, centralized state governments compared with Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine. Even on the Western and Eastern fronts, preserved a macabre sense of decorum. Yes, terrible acts took place in the First World War--murder, rape, pillaging, poison gas and vicious trench fighting. But even then, the war in Europe obeyed strange rules: the taking of prisoners, the feeding of troops, and the separation between the war-front and the home-front. 

I conclude this letter with a couple of quotes from General Archibald Wavell, a man who fought alongside Lawrence in the Palestine campaign. 

 That is to say, Lawrence was too aware of who he was, and who he was not. He was British, and a bastard-born, and not of Arabia. His education positively dripped with the soaking benefits wrought from state-sanctioned security and comfort. But he fought alongside his friends as though he were an Arab prince. He never forgave himself. He loathed the Turks, and often justified his actions in the war as a chance to destroy something he loathed. In this light, Wavell viewed Lawrence as "a Hamlet who had slain his uncle neatly and efficiently at the beginning of Act II, and spent the remainder of the play in repenting his act and writing a long explanation of it to Horatio." (Wavell The Good Soldier, 1948, 59-61).

I think most people would say 'no.' Just like most people would refuse to follow Lawrence into Syria in 1911, before the war, much less in 1916, when the Arab revolt faced destruction along the shores of the Red Sea. But the people in our lives almost always say 'no.' That is what makes leadership, and art, and astonishing success so very rare. People say 'no,' because they are weak, and saying 'no' is easy.

And yet, people said 'yes' to making 'Lawrence of Arabia.' Perhaps it was perhaps, the sort of British thing to do, as when Lionel de Rothschild loaned Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli the money to purchase the Egyptian shares of the Suez Canal.

To return to Roger Ebert:

Rankin, Nicholas. A Genius for Deception: How cunning helped the British win two world wars, 1914-1945. OUP (2008). 

In A Genius for Deception, author Nicholas Rankin uncovers the British use of camouflage, fraud, deception, propaganda, and counter-espionage throughout the First and Second World War. He builds his narrative in chronological order. Beginning with the First World War, Rankin depicts the personal efforts of dozens of unique individuals struggling against an enemy abroad. His narrative favors obscure misfits, such as painter-turned-camouflager Solomon J. Solomon, as well as legendary figures such as T.E. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, and Winston Churchill. The examination of disparate stories requires reeling narrative leaps across geographical space, such that one page focuses on creating dummy corpses in France while the next leaps to the Mediterranean to study guerrilla tactics. On all fronts Rankin locates protagonists with pluck and gumption--and occasionally enough luck to pull off their tricks. The British civilians and soldiers try just about anything once in order to defeat the Axis. The range of characters includes Joan Pujol, a double-crossing spy sending Hitler bad information, and Dudley Clarke, a fastidious and imaginative staff officer masking the true strength of the British armed services in Egypt. The story of A Genius for Deception partly becomes the story of Dudley Clarke, as no one besides Churchill in the Second World War seemed as intent to fool the Axis powers at every turn. Not all gambles paid off, but they certainly kept Rankin's protagonists occupied throughout the war. 

In the UK, the book's title changes to Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945. I suppose that Churchill's name might sell more books in Britain than in the U.S., but I think it is a misleading title. Churchill features prominently throughout the book, but more as one of many operators rather than leader of a coven. 
         
The book works best when Rankin describes the early battles of the British in the Second World War. Here, the author takes advantage of his own family history (he had two relatives fighting at the time) to place cataclysmic battles in personal perspective. The book works less well when Rankin attempts to defend his thesis: namely, that the British possess a cultural taste for cunning and deception that helped them win major global conflicts. He provides evidence of cunning and deception, but only weak explanations of why the British version of these traits surpasses that of others. More interestingly, I think he makes an error of causal inference; by that, I mean he attributes the use of deception tactics to helping win the war, but that the tactics more correctly helped save lives. If a German bomb struck a fake tank rather than a real one, it made little difference to the outcome of the war, but a tremendous difference to the individuals inside the tank.
           
Winning a war is hard to do. It better serves human imagination if we know that the Allies won both the First and Second Worlds Wars with sheer strength, and not sleight of hand.

John E. Mack. A Prince of our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence. Harvard UP. 1976.

John E. Mack’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography, A Prince of our Disorder, gently uses the tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to understand T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), an Irish-English, second-child of an illegitimate marriage whose self-confidence, personal charisma, and feverish imagination propelled him to the forefront of some of the most pivotal events of the early 20th century.

Lawrence became famous while serving as tactical adviser to the leaders of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Combat destroys illusions, but it also creates myths, and Lawrence (to this day) serves as one of the Great War’s greatest heroes, as well as its most disappointed solider. After an early childhood spent fighting off his domineering mother, he studied medieval archeology and poetry at Oxford, and began touring the Middle East as an archeologist. Like many of his peers, his war-like medieval fantasies collided with reality at the outbreak of war with the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and (most importantly to Lawrence) the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps too short for immediate acceptance as a British officer for the war in Europe, Lawrence leveraged his Middle Eastern expertise into service as an intelligence officer in Cairo. He grew restless, however, after two of his brothers died on the Western front, and thereafter Lawrence accelerated his ambition to participate in a conflict in the Arab world. Lawrence always measured the present against an impossible and imaginary medieval ideal, “and his most important actions may be seen as efforts to impose upon grimmer circumstance, to which had also to adapt, his utopian imaginings.” He welded a rich fantasy life to absolute action—a combination with which he won victory after victory in simultaneous support of the British Army and Arab nationalism.

Lawrence remained painfully aware of his own dual identity: “The two selves [the Bedouin and the overcivilized European],” Lawrence wrote, “are mutually destructive… so I fall between them into the nihilism which cannot find, in being, even a false God in which to believe.” The timeline of Mack's book goes far beyond the reach of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and places a much greater emphasis on Lawrence's life before and after the war. Mack, for example, reports the Arab revolt and capture of Damascus over a course of fifty pages, whereas Seven Pillars of Wisdom uses some seven hundred pages for the same task.

 Mack’s use of psychoanalysis and social psychology do not impede the flow and structure of the book. He wisely avoids pedantic diatribes on psychological theory. He keeps the focus on Lawrence, except where he anticipates a necessary corrective to the ‘popular’ psychology of TIME, television, and the like. Mack’s expertise works quietly throughout the text, and pays steep dividends when he examines contradictions and tensions within Lawrence’s self-representations. 

For example, Mack astutely reports two accounts of an Arab ambush of Turkish forces, one written for a fellow soldier, and another for a civilian audience. To the fellow soldier, Lawrence viewed combat as a “stunt” with such “beautiful shots” that the violence only took “about ten minutes… I hope,” Lawrence wrote, “that it sounds as fun as it is.” Yet in a separate record of the exact same ambush, Lawrence wrote a civilian friend that “This killing of the Turks is horrible… I hope when the nightmare ends I will wake up and become alive again.” 

Mack’s remarkable biography shows that Lawrence’s fun ended with the writing of his famous memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Yet the nightmare of relishing in war relentlessly pursued Lawrence until his death in a motorcycle accident in 1935. In the interim period, even as the press lionized the ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ the real Lawrence abandoned all political hopes for Arab nationalism, and sought personal purification through sexual abstinence and menial servitude in the British ranks. Throughout the journey, Mack provides a bright light with which to see even the darkest corners of Lawrence’s tremendously beautiful psyche. 

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Doubleday, [1926] 1938. 672 pg. 

"Some Englishmen... believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin..." And so also begins T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir of the 1916-1918 Arab Revolt that took place during the First World War. He opens his tale with a clear understanding of context, and a sly smile as to the uncanny nature of the story about to unfold. Lawrence, a young archaeologist familiar with Arab-Islamic culture, quietly enters the British army at the outbreak of the First World War. He then rides into the desert, ostensibly under British direction, to encourage the Arabs to aggressively fight the Turks, and create a diversion from the main efforts of the British regular army. To rally the disparate Arab tribes, he preaches a message of absolute liberation and glory, wherein the Arabs might reestablish their dominance in the Middle East, and expunge the light of foreign influence. Lawrence helps the Arab chiefs create and channel a painful, violent, and masochistic campaign of guerrilla warfare. He assassinates wayward followers, glories in combat, and waxes philosophic as to the futility of mercy. Lawrence lives in the world with an exciting, irreligious energy. He couples that energy with a British school boy's sense of decency and a mastery of Arab mores, particularly those pertaining to power politics. He struggles with incompatible allegiances to both the British Army and the Arab nationalism. In a few short years, the British and their Arab allies annihilate the Turks and seize the great city of Damascus. Lawrence finds that the city's abrupt capture "disclosed the exhaustion of my main springs of action." He resigns his post. "And at once, I knew how much I was sorry."

Lawrence's penchant for introspection and abstract formulation move the book beyond a mere catalog of facts. His writing demands that one ask whether literature or history or sociology might best value the blood-soaked fruits of his battles in the desert. He comes across as a man of virtue and spirit, uniquely suited to understanding and appreciating the beauty and complexity of the Arab guerrilla campaign. In the least, Seven Pillars accomplishes Lawrence's goal of creating a monument to the men he fought with. Yet it also stands for something more: a testament to human will, and the ready potential for unleashing our imaginative, violent impulses not for cause or country, but for the sheer glory of the action. 

T. E. Lawrence never authorised the mass publication of a definitive version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Various versions of the book appeared very different guises over the years, and this variety presents readers with something of a puzzle when deciding which version of the book to read.

If you wish to purchase a used copy, I strongly recommend looking for the 1938 "De Luxe" edition from Double Day. The editors cut the book marvelously well, and include may helpful drawings, cartoons, maps, and abstracts. I cannot say much about the other editions except the 2011 Wilder edition with a grey cover: Avoid this version at all costs. Filled with errors, the Wilder edition treats its readers like a dog treats a fire hydrant--yes, the book is glad you're there, but it has a terrible way of showing it. If you're looking for an audio version, James Wilby ably read an abridged version of the book for CSA Word Classic.


UPDATE:   5 November 2014


Thanks to the Harry Ransom Center I have had the opportunity to look at several versions of Seven Pillars. My favorite version was the 1926 volume that he printed in full color; he only printed 200 copies for his subscribers, so this version is not easy to get a hold of. But it is well worth the trip to the HRC to see it. The scores of graphic images and portraits not only magnify Lawrence's themes, but also place the book firmly in the twentieth century. The 1938 copy reads like a Medieval epic with updated pictures. But the 1926 version feels like a cross between a graphic novel and an illuminated manuscript. It is wholly original and never boring.  It represents the only way to understand what Lawrence was laboring towards for close to eight difficult years. It is cliche to say the story 'leaps off the page,' but it just this, and then fills the room, burns down the roof, and lets in the rain.

Many publishers have attempted to abridge Seven Pillars, and to strip out its portraits and drawings for the sake of decreasing the cost of publication. The only abridgment worth touching is Revolt in the Desert: the Authorised Abridged Edition of 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom.' This is the abridgment that Lawrence himself created. As Jeremy Wilson (Lawrence's authorised biographer) states in his 2011 introduction to the book, Lawrence relented to public pressure to create a popular narrative of the capture of Damascus. For the task, Lawrence trimmed the book's political, social, and psychological dimensions, and even cut out his capture at Der'ra and his abandonment of the mission. The book nevertheless tells a coherent story and communicates the nature of Lawrence's campaign in a meaningful way. It is much shorter than Seven Pillars. If teachers are looking for a reasonably priced version of Seven Pillars to assign to their undergraduate students, this is probably the one to choose.