![\"four](\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-0.gif\" "\\"four")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Janet Wallach, 1996<\/p>\n
This is an amazing story of a woman who played a major role in the early 20th century in the creation of the current country of Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 She was one of the first women to attend Oxford and then went on to travel all over the Middle East.\u00c2\u00a0 In the course of her travels she met with tribal sheiks and became fluent in Arabic.\u00c2\u00a0 As a result of her adventures, she went to work for the British Foreign Service and played a key role in the ascendancy of\u00c2\u00a0Faisal as the first Iraqi king.<\/p>\n
Gertrude Bell was an extraordinary person\u00c2\u00a0who\u00c2\u00a0excelled in a man’s world.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Her knowledge of the Middle East was unsurpassed and\u00c2\u00a0her influence was felt throughout the region.\u00c2\u00a0 Her story is fascinating, but the perspective that it provides of modern day Iraq is very thought provoking.\u00c2\u00a0 As I read the book,\u00c2\u00a0it\u00c2\u00a0seemed as if I were reading about\u00c2\u00a0the current state of affairs in that country rather than a historical view of it\u00c2\u00a0almost hundred years ago.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0As a result of reading this book, I am even more aware of how difficult it will be\u00c2\u00a0for anyone to govern it in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 One could only wish that our\u00c2\u00a0leaders had as much insight into the history of this country before we launched the most recent war.<\/p>\n
I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to read about a fascinating individual and her impact on the creation of the state of Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 I also recommend it to anyone who would like to gain additional knowledge of the culture and politics of that region. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Janet Wallach, 1996 This is an amazing story of a woman who played a major role in the early 20th century in the creation of the current country of Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 She was one of the first women to attend …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[17,16],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-biography","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}