This is an astonishing and timely account of 50 years of bloodshed and tragedy in the Middle East from one of our finest and most revered journalists. The Great War for Civilisation is written with passion and anger, a reporter's eyewitness account of the Middle East's history. All the most dangerous men of the past quarter century in the region - from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Saddam to Ariel Sharon - come alive in these pages. Fisk has met most of them, and even spent the night out at a guerrilla camp with Bin Laden himself. In a narrative of blood and mass killing, Fisk tells the story of the growing hatred of the West by millions of Muslims, the West's cynical support for the Middle East's most ruthless dictators and America's ever more powerful military presence in the world's most dangerous lands as well as its uncritical, unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.