Mr. Montefiore’s goal, he says, is to offer a comprehensive history of the Middle East since the dawn of the 20th century. Not all his stories are original, given the breadth of material he covers, but he enriches them with fascinating details ... Mr. Montefiore doesn’t play favorites, subjecting all his characters to scrutiny ... Mr. Montefiore’s muscular prose, blending highbrow erudition with blunt and occasionally vulgar humor, is indelible. The Cauldron is a triumph of blood-and-thunder narrative history.
For readers already interested in the history of the Middle East, The Cauldron unquestionably earns its place on the shelf of books that have in their turn attempted to explain the whole region ... In scope, it may be considered the most ambitious.
Leading historian Simon Sebag Montefiore provides a masterful survey of the political rivalries and personal vendettas that have shaped this region ... Written with pace and verve ... Essential reading.
Finally – an authoritative, stimulating history of the modern Middle East ... Exhilarating and accomplished ... The extent of The Cauldron’s narrative is vast ... Montefiore also has an eye for telling details and quotes ... Amid the current tsunami of overheated commentary on the Middle East, this reasonable and genuine effort to present a careful, fact-based and sensitive account of such contentious topics is very valuable indeed and deserves to be widely read.
Could not be more timely ... To make this sprawling, multifaceted story into a page-turner he leavens it with pearls of wisdom from Arab and Persian poets and sages, while ushering extraordinary characters across the stage. It is a remarkable feat.
An astonishingly ambitious book ... His organising idea is a powerful one. The Middle East is a “cauldron” because geography has made it a crossroads and prize for empires, migrants, settlers and competing peoples ... Montefiore is also a gifted miniature portraitist. His leaders tend to arrive with an epithet, a physical detail, a weakness or an absurdity ... Yet the same narrative method contributes to the book’s breathlessness. Montefiore advances at such speed that an assassination may be followed by a coup, a marriage, an invasion and a new ideology within a few pages. The vividness of each episode can paradoxically make the wider argument harder to follow ... None of this invalidates The Cauldron. Quite the reverse. Its scholarship, range and vitality make it an impressive achievement.
Historian Montefiore’s ambitious effort to chronicle Middle Eastern life since 1900 is learned, clear-eyed, and unavoidably diffuse ... A bustling, knowledgeable history.
