Blood and Sand

July 18, 2016
British historian von Tunzelmann (Red Heat) skillfully and artfully integrates the complex, simultaneous Suez and Hungarian crises of 1956 into a single story of Cold War conflict as no one has before. Her day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour, staging of events and of the characters who caused and managed them is a deeply researched achievement. If there’s a pivot to the book, it’s U.K. Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s unhinged feelings about Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose government seized and blocked the Suez Canal. But the Soviet-American military stakes were probably higher in Hungary, whose tragic fate was left to Soviet brutality. That neither crisis precipitated world war was thanks in large part to the Eisenhower administration’s determination, in the midst of Ike’s reelection campaign, not to aid Britain, France, and Israel in reversing Nasser’s canal seizure, and its less defensible decision to leave Hungary to its fate. Snappy prose and revealing evidence carry the often riveting story along. But it’s hard to find an argument, idea, or interpretation anywhere in the book—that is, to learn von Tunzelmann’s considered views. If fact-filled narrative were all there was to historical writing, this book would be unsurpassed; history being more than chronicle, the book suffers as a result.

A tale of political bungling with tragic consequences on two continents.Following the nationalization of the Suez Canal by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in July 1956, the governments of Great Britain, France, and Israel entered into a scheme for a joint invasion of Egypt. Each nation's leader had his own motivations, including control of the canal and oil pipelines, Nasser's support for Algerian rebels, Israeli access to the Red Sea, and a strong dislike of Nasser personally. Attempts to keep their collusion secret quickly led them into a tangle of lies to their allies--in particular the United States--to the United Nations, and sometimes to their own governments. The resulting invasion in October and November was a colossal diplomatic, political, and military fiasco resolved when an infuriated Dwight Eisenhower forced a British withdrawal by withholding support for the plummeting pound. This neo-colonialist folly further rendered Western governments incapable of confronting the Soviet Union when it crushed the Hungarian uprising that, by coincidence, occurred during the Suez crisis. For Eisenhower, who faced an election in early November, Suez was the mother of all October surprises. Guardian columnist von Tunzelmann's (Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean, 2011, etc.) narrative cracks along like an international political thriller as she tracks the action day by day, sometimes hour by hour. The British prime minister, Anthony Eden, leads the cast of characters; unhealthily obsessed with Nasser, his quixotic effort to reassert British dominance in the Middle East effectively ended Britain's status as a great power. The author lays bare at every turn the arrogance, complacency, incompetence, and wishful thinking that drove British and French decisions in a story that could appear as comedy were it not for the death, destruction, and diplomatic wreckage that resulted. A fine new account of an unnecessary crisis that "scattered dragon's teeth on all-too-fertile soil," which "would bear gruesome fruit for decades." COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2016

Offering a day-by-day accounting of the international crisis over the Suez Canal in 1956, this latest work by Tunzelmann (Indian Summer) explains the canal's profound importance and consequence for Egypt, Israel, England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Arguably, the most significant part of this gripping tale is the role of President Dwight Eisenhower although other pivotal actors are critically analyzed: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Eisenhower, soon to face his 1956 reelection campaign, clearly relished the historical linkage with the likes of Great Britain and France, yet desired no war, conventional or nuclear, to assist those nations in either maintaining or expanding their respective empires. At the hands of Tunzelmann, Eisenhower is portrayed as the most levelheaded of the leaders, while Eden is cast in a more negative light. Readers will realize global actors don't solve problems so much as they do their best to cope with them. VERDICT This convincingly argued book is a timely and insightful must-read for anyone who cares about Middle Eastern history or 20th-century diplomacy, as well as students of global affairs.--Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, ID

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