Our Last Best Chance: A Story of War and Peace

by King Abdullah II of Jordan

Overview

A newsbreaking memoir that tackles head-on the toughest challenge in the world today.

When a dying King Hussein shocked the world by picking his son rather than his brother, the longtime crown prince, to be the next king of Jordan, no one was more surprised than the young head of Special Operations, who discovered his life was in for a major upheaval.

This is the inspirational story of a young prince who went to boarding school in America and military academy in Britain and grew up believing he would be a soldier. Back home, he hunted down terrorists and modernized Jordan's Special Forces. Then, suddenly, he found himself king. Together with his wife, Queen Rania, he transformed what it meant to be a monarch, going undercover to escape the bubble of the court while she became the Muslim world's most passionate advocate of women's rights.

In this exceptionally candid memoir, King Abdullah tackles the single toughest issue he faces head-on- how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian standoff- and reveals himself to be an invaluable intermediary between America and the Arab world. He writes about the impact of the Iraq war on his neighborhood and how best to tackle Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Why would a sitting head of state choose to write about the most explosive issues he faces? King Abdullah does so now because he believes we face a moment of truth: a last chance for peace in the Middle East. The prize is enormous, the cost of failure far greater than we dare imagine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101190135
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/22/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	491,312
File size:	404 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

King Abdullah II spent his formative years in the United States, where he went to Eaglebrook and Deerfield, and in England, where he trained to be an officer at Sandhurst. A cavalry officer in the Jordanian army, he eventually became commander of the Jordanian Special Forces, a position that allowed him to forge invaluable relationships with intelligence and military offices around the world. The head of the Hashemite family, he is a forty-third generation direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. His family ruled the holy city of Mecca for more than eight hundred years and his great-grandfather led the Arab revolt for independence from Ottoman rule.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part I

1 The Conflict Begins 3

2 The 1967 War 14

3 Dark Clouds over Amman 22

4 Arriving in America 31

Part II

5 Sandhurst 43

6 Qatraneh Nights 50

7 A Secret Mission 56

8 "You Guys Don't Stand a Chance" 64

9 A Royal Wedding 77

10 Lessons in Diplomacy 86

11 Very Special Operations 100

Part III

12 In the Footsteps of a Legend 111

13 Becoming King 130

14 Friends and Neighbors 142

15 Transforming Jordan 155

16 Desert Deerfield 177

Part IV

17 Jerusalem at the Heart of Conflict 187

18 Seeking Peace, Getting War 196

19 War in the Desert 215

20 "We Will Be Greeted as Liberators" 225

Part V

21 My Islam 239

22 Jordan's 9/11 250

23 The Amman Message 257

Part VI

24 The End of an Era 267

25 The Mask Slips 280

26 A New Voice from America 291

27 Fortress Israel or a Fifty-Seven-State Solution? 307

Acknowledgments 329

Index 333

Editorial Reviews

"This worthy addition to that distinctive genre of books written by political leaders still in office is part autobiography, part political history." — Foreign Affairs

From the Publisher