Desert Queen - by Janet Wallach (Paperback)

About the Book

This incident-packed biography reveals a woman whose achievements and independent spirit were especially remarkable for her times, and who brought the same passion and intensity to her explorations as she did to her rich romantic life.

Book Synopsis

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 achievements--a 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.

Review Quotes

"A major figure in the creation of modern-day Iraq." --Los Angeles Times

"Desert Queen, as timely as today's headlines, plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." --The Boston Globe

"Wallach has done an outstanding job of bringing Gertrude Bell to life." --The Dallas Morning News

"A richly textured biography of a . . . woman who devoted her life to knowing the desert Arabs better, perhaps, than any other European of her day. . . . Wallach comfortably commands the tangled political and diplomatic history of the Middle East." --Chicago Tribune

About the Author

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 Palestinians; Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder; and Still Small Voices: The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. She lives in New York City.