TE Lawrence was one of the first superstars made possible by modern communications. His accomplishments are almost too astonishing to believe, and this is a very fine read of his exploits. ( )

Biography. I think this would probably be very interesting if I had time to get into it (unfortunately, I don't have that time right now). ( )

This book started out pretty slow for me, but by the end, it was fascinating.

Oddly enough, I found the section on Lawrence's desert warfare much less interesting than the rest of the book, despite the fact that it was his actions in WWI that got him the fame. But Lawrence was a much more interesting character than just the man who inspired the Arabs (and everybody else). After he helped Churchill carve up the middle east during the peace talks after WWI (something else I didn't know about) he then went on to enlist as a private in the RAF under an assumed name.

Of course, being Lawrence, he wasn't an ordinary private. He corresponded with the head of the RAF (and just about everybody else of importance in England); he greatly improved British search-and-rescue missions; he loved tinkering with motorcycles; and he wrote several literary masterpieces, and a translation of the Odyssey. All this from a man who originally trained as an archaeologist.

Almost all of what I know about Lawrence comes from this book (and vaguely remembered scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia) so I can't comment on the accuracy here. Korda has an interesting section at the end where he looks at what various other writers have done with the legend of Lawrence. Korda certainly comes across as giving a balanced treatment (certainly he is much more balanced than the extremes he cites); I think this was one of Korda's goals in writing this book. ( )

A decent biography of Lawrence for the general reader. Korda writes in an informative and engaging style, lucid and clear. There are numerous maps and images, with a section of plates in color. I don't understand why they have a generous section of black-and-white plates AND several black-and-white images interspersed in the text. Why not just put all images in the text? I also don't like that Korda has two large chapters on Lawrence in 1917, culminating in the taking of Aqaba, before backtracking for four chapters to go back and talk about Lawrence's life from birth to 1916, and then continuing forward with his biography till death. This is annoying. Anyway, this is less ponderous and scholarly than, say, Jeremy Wilson's huge Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence), it is way better than Michael Asher's annoyingly journalistic Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia or the conspiratorial sensationalist T. E. Lawrence: A Biography by Michael Yardley. Korda tells the history in a fine, narrative manner, only intruding to address various historical controversies (like was Lawrence gay, what happened at Deraa, did Lawrence sell out the Arabs, etc.). Good maps, good images; bad end-noting system; decent bibliography (Korda references primary sources, but he leans on secondary sources a lot); index. A pretty good book. ( )

Fascinating.

At the end, I'm a little shell-shocked at spending 700 pages with T.E. Lawrence. 700 pages is an awful lot of reading, particularly since Korda's emphasis was on military strategy (hardly my area of expertise) and since Lawrence really didn't have much of a personal life; what he did have was distinctly odd. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." ~ T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. ( )