Midnight At The Oasis
by Max Rodenbeck for NY Times Books (Jan. 28, 2007)
“Around the time of the War of Independence, America’s main contact with the Middle East consisted in trading Caribbean rum for Turkish opium. It’s hard not to wish, reading the epic story of this 230-year relationship, now usefully condensed into a single well-researched volume, that things could have remained as simple as the swapping of your recreational poison for mine.”
