The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2019 29 Masters of Mayhem: Lawrence of Arabia and the British Military Mission to the Hejaz James Stejskal, Casemate, 2018, $32.95/hardcover, 304 pages. T.E. Lawrence—Lawrence of Arabia— was one of the earliest practitioners of modern unconventional warfare. The tactics and strategies he developed during the Arab Revolt, which took place during World War I, were later used by revolutionaries like Mao Zedong and Nguyen Giap in their own wars of liberation. Both men kept Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom close at hand. James Stejskal’s book explores how Lawrence and the British Military Mission supported unconventional warfare in the Hejaz (the mountainous area of northwest Saudi Arabia that gave rise to early Islam and contains the sites of many holy places) during the Arab Revolt. To do this, they created the Hedgehog force and formed armored car sections and other units. This culminated in operations against the Ottoman Turkish Army that enabled Field Marshal Edmund Allenby to achieve victory in 1918. James Stejskal is a military historian and conflict archaeolo- gist who specializes in the research and investigation of irregular warfare. He is the author of numerous articles and two previous books: Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the U.S. Army’s Elite, 1956-1960 (2016) and The Horns of the Beast: The Swakop River Campaign and World War I in South- West Africa, 1914-15 (2014). He is the husband of Ambassador Wanda Nesbitt, a Foreign Service Career Minister who is currently dean of the FSI School of Language Studies. The Knowable Past Kenneth J. Dillon, Scientia Press, 2018, $25/paperback, 320 pages. Approached from the right angle and with a little luck, the past will, upon occasion, reveal its secrets to us. Specifically, this book spells out the theory that the Earth originated in the outer solar system, and argues that tidal forces during approaches of Mars caused the great mass extinctions of our planet’s prehistory. The Knowable Past revises and enhances the Venus Theory of Immanuel Velikovsky, which says that Mars has repeatedly come close enough to the Earth to set off various catastrophes. The book also investigates other mysteries from ancient and modern history, including the origins of the Etruscans, strategies of the world wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the John F. Kennedy assassination and the run-up to the 9/11 attacks. This book is primarily geared to historical and scientific detectives, but it is not just for them. Anyone who seeks a better understanding of the past can find food for thought in it. Kenneth J. Dillon served as a Foreign Service officer, with an emphasis in intelligence analysis. He has a Ph.D. in history from Cornell University and has taught at several universities, tried his hand at tech business and written books on history, science and medicine. A defender of orphan causes and targets of scientific rejectionism, he lives in Washington, D.C. Modern Panama: From Occupation to Crossroads of the Americas Michael L. Conniff and Gene E. Bigler, Cambridge University Press, 2019, $32.99/paperback, 364 pages. Although the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Trea- ties set the stage for Panama finally to control all of its own territory, includ- ing the Panama Canal, little has been written about how the country has fared since then—both as the manager of a major waterway and as a sovereign nation in a turbulent region. Modern Panama seeks to fill this major gap in Latin American history. Despite the country’s continued struggle with political cor- ruption, Michael L. Conniff and Gene E. Bigler argue, changes since the turnover of the Canal have been largely positive. Panama has become a stable, functioning democracy with a growing economy and a higher standard of living. Michael L. Conniff is a professor emeritus of history at San Jose State University. He is the author of A New History of Modern Latin America (2017, with Lawrence Clayton and Susan Gauss); Panama and the United States , 3rd ed. (2012) and Black Labor on a White Canal (1985). Gene E. Bigler is a retired Foreign Service officer who worked on the transition of the Panama Canal from U.S. to Panama- nian ownership. He has also taught political science and public policy analysis at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración in Caracas, Venezuela, and other institutions in the United States and Latin America.