Michael Korda - Hero [Kindle azw3]

A foreigner, he united and led the Arab tribes to defeat the Turks and eventually capture Damascus. Yet as he illuminates Lawrence's achievements, Korda digs further to expose the flesh-and-blood man and his contradictory nature: a born leader utterly fearless and seemingly impervious to pain, thirst, fatigue and danger who remained shy, modest, and retiring; a scholar and an aesthete who was also a bold and cold-blooded warrior. As Korda shows, Lawrence was not only a man of his times, but a visionary whose achievements - as a farsighted diplomat, brilliant military strategist, the first media celebrity, and acclaimed writer - transcended them.Korda analyses Lawrence's vision for the modern Middle East, plans that, if they had been carried through, might have prevented the hatred and bloodshed that have become ubiquitous in the region. Ultimately, as this magisterial work demonstrates, Lawrence remains the paradigm of the hero in modern times, the arch-heroic type whose life was at once a triumph and a sacrifice, and whose capacity to astonish remains undimmed.