At 600+ pages this is the definitive and highly detailed history of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Very interesting and relevant to neo-conservatives and Bush Era US Middle East adventures. In summer of 1956 Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Ike and John Foster Dulles were blinded by the Cold War dichotomy and their US Panama Canal concerns and failed to properly monitor allies France, Israel and especially Anthony Eden's British government as they marched to war with Egypt, as the three cavalierly hoped for US, UN and international mediation to fail. The Franco-Anglo-Israeli effort was complicated by the Soviet and Yugoslavian presence in the Canal and a 1950s Hashemite / Anglo regimes in Jordan, Syria and Iraq. I wish I could say that Kyle wrote it well ( he was at the Economist at the time ) but I cannot. I don't question the DETAIL per se, the memos, letters, minutes, briefs are all important--but his writing style was way too wordy. Any history professor today could easily scratch out 20% of the words, asides, modifiers, subjunctives, repetition etc., it is needlessly complicated and unnecessarily roundabout and Victorian in style-- (& The St. Martin Press evidently failed to use the red pen). But Kyle's SUEZ is worth wading through for a final and definitive view of the Athony Eden debacle and as a basic 1950's Cold War Middle East history. Ba'athists, Moshe Dayan, Anwar Sadat, Dag Hammerskjold, Golda Meir, Harold McMillan, Louis Mountbatten, David Ben-Gurion and the French commandos from Algeria all play a role in this massive cock up of all cock ups ........