Most Americans, including university students, have been educated to believe that U.S. involvement with the Middle East began with the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1933 and developed further with the post-Second World War vicissitudes of Arab nationalism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Michael Oren’s remarkable book offers a paradigmatically different perspective, by providing a comprehensive 230- year history of a complex relationship that actually began with the founding of the United States in 1776 and continues to this day, with only one third of the book devoted to an overview of the post-Second World War era.