Film: Gibsons Revolution

Many of the best passages in this book are accounts of Western visits. Gustave Flaubert delights in the company of nomadic slave traders as much as he deplores the company of Western bourgeois, while Friedrich Engels prefers the bourgeois, calling Bedouins “a nation of robbers.” Dean Acheson describes Mosadeq with his “two bright, shoebutton eyes.” Mark Twain, perhaps the ugliest American to appear in these pages, remorselessly describes trying to loot an archeological site:

We brought not a relic from Ephesus! After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments from the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to disgorge!

About the Author

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is a National Review contributing editor.

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Many of the best passages in this book are accounts of Western visits. Gustave Flaubert delights in the company of nomadic slave traders as much as he deplores the company of Western bourgeois, while Friedrich Engels prefers the bourgeois, calling Bedouins “a nation of robbers.” Dean Acheson describes Mosadeq with his “two bright, shoebutton eyes.” Mark Twain, perhaps the ugliest American to appear in these pages, remorselessly describes trying to loot an archeological site:

We brought not a relic from Ephesus! After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments from the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to disgorge!