Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II »

Lloyd C. Gardner is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam. He lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Three Kings is a magisterial portrait of America’s ascent in the Middle East during and following World War II. The book reveals a story of America’s scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Lloyd Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region to offer the first history of America’s efforts to supplant the British Empire in the Middle East.

Publishers Weekly

Gardner (Pay Any Price) finds the roots of a fractured and turbulent Middle East in American machinations in the decades following WWII. He begins with the Truman Doctrine, whose goal of Soviet containment focused American power designs in the Middle East and whose parsing of strategic interests as a “global ideological struggle” enabled an “imperial presidency” and the vast allocation of military spending—hallmarks of 21st-century American foreign policy. Rather than plodding through successive American presidencies and their attendant policies, Gardner homes in on two key events in U.S.–Middle East relations—the 1952 Egyptian revolution and the 1979 Iranian oil crisis—and keeps his readers rapt and focused on the current relevance of these episodes. He weaves together anecdotes, congressional hearings and historical accounts to illustrate how the U.S.'s carefully pursued aim of creating a “sphere of influence” in the Middle East has fomented the unrest in Iran, a fraught Saudi reign and the Israel-Palestine crisis. An erudite, persuasively argued and lucid primer for both the layperson and the expert. (Nov.)

1 Introduction to a doctrine 1

2 The United States moves into the Middle East 16

3 The Truman Doctrine protectorate 48

4 The Iran oil crisis 85

5 Damming the Egyptian revolution 135

6 Be careful what you wish for 185

Epilogue 225

Notes 229

Index 249