i'm not sure I can judge this book accurately. It deals way more with military history than I was expecting. I lost my interest in the litany of battles and casualties and belligerents, so I took way to long to read this. So much so, that I kinda forgot a good part of the historical context provided at the start of the book about what caused so much racial strife. I was also hoping more for a post ww1 history of how the middle east became more violent, but that section is so short. If military history is not your thing, stay away.