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Desert Queen

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The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. • With a new Afterword • "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe

Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.
 
In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievementsa woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds with the confined and custom-bound England she left behind.

Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure.
© Vance Jacobs 2012

Janet Wallach is the author of The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, as well as Seraglio and Chanel: Her Style and Her Life. She is also coauthor, with her husband John Wallach, of three previous books on the Middle East: The New PalestiniansArafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder; and Still Small Voices: The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. She lives in New York City.

Janet Wallach is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).

View titles by Janet Wallach

About

The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. • With a new Afterword • "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe

Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.
 
In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievementsa woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds with the confined and custom-bound England she left behind.

Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure.

Author

© Vance Jacobs 2012

Janet Wallach is the author of The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, as well as Seraglio and Chanel: Her Style and Her Life. She is also coauthor, with her husband John Wallach, of three previous books on the Middle East: The New PalestiniansArafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder; and Still Small Voices: The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. She lives in New York City.

Janet Wallach is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).

View titles by Janet Wallach

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