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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Phillip Knightley
As he admits, his work, especially in this powerfully-written book, is filled with accounts of horror, pain and injustice. His triumph is that he has turned a slightly dubious and over-romanticised craft into a honorable vocation.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Neal Ascherson
He writes with a marvellous resource of image and language. His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking
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Favorable
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The Observer Rebecca Seal
So much more than a modern history of the Middle East.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Stephen Humphreys
A book of unquestionable importance, given Fisk's unmatched experience of war and its impact in the contemporary Middle East and his capacity to convey that experience in concrete, passionate language.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Ethan P. Pullman
In each well-annotated and provocative chapter, Fisk's impartial reports of torture, executions, political manipulations, and human loss are not mere reportage but instead aim to arouse us from apathy and challenge us to hold those in authority responsible. [1 Nov 2005, p.100]
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Michael B. Farrell
The book is at its best when Fisk takes us through the battlefields from which he has reported. We hear the bullets, feel the desert heat. The point of Fisk's history lessons is evident. He's boldly, scathingly against this current battle in the Middle East. But what he doesn't leave us with is his vision for a better future.
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Favorable
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Salon Gary Kamiya
Fisk excels at pointing out the lies and sins of the powerful, but he offers few suggestions of his own: His moral outrage can make the perfect the enemy of the good. He is not a consistent political thinker; his anger leads him to embrace positions that are problematic and even self-contradictory. Yet despite its flaws, The Great War for Civilisation is a magisterial achievement.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle John Freeman
The great benefit of hearing this history from Fisk is that he was there, on the frontlines for almost every single major event.
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Favorable
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The Nation Augustus Richard Norton
I must admit that while reading this massive, unruly book I imagined Fisk emptying all his drawers on the bed. The book would have benefited greatly from a strong-willed editor. It is not just that the prose is sometimes flabby but that anecdotes and jabs are recycled, sometimes within the same chapter.
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Siddhartha Deb
For all his awareness of the past, he is an untidy thinker who seems to attribute colonialism to no more than the bad intentions of a few key players. Economics, culture, politics, ideas, or technology plays no role in explaining why the Western world should have suddenly become so interested in establishing colonial mandates over the sands of Arabia.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Fisk's brand of reporting-with-attitude has obvious dangers. His ungovernable anger may do his heart credit, but it does not make for satisfactory history...Fisk's condemnations, and his tone of voice, are so sweeping as to damage his own case.
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Mixed
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The Economist
The extent to which Arabs have been the authors of their own misfortune is not given adequate consideration in this dogged, powerful and often infuriating polemic against the West.
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Mixed
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The Guardian Oliver Miles
Vigilant editing and ruthless pruning could perhaps have made two or three good short books out of this one.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Richard Beeston
The most obvious reflection is that [the book] is far too big and unwieldy. Were it dropped from one of Fisk’s hated US bombers it would flatten an entire Afghan village.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Ethan Bronner
Mr. Fisk seems to have decided that even striving for objectivity is silly...His many legitimate points are sometimes warped by his perspective.
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