Book Reviews : The Art of the Impossible: Diplomatic Alternatives in the Middle East. By MICHAEL REISMAN. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Pp. 161. $1.95.)

• Author: Lorenzo K. Kimball
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297102400425
• Published date: 01 December 1971
• Date: 01 December 1971

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bureaucratic mQres - in the role of a critic albeit, but offering the conventional
critique. Perhaps the State Department and the nation it serves need to heed such
establishment critics.
DAVID HOWARD DAVIS
Rutgers University
The Art of the Impossible: Diplomatic Alternatives in the Middle East. By
MICHAEL REISMAN. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Pp. 161.
$1.95.)
This is an excellent, although brief, attempt to focus on the complex major
problems in the Middle East today and to propose &dquo;possibilities for positive and
creative action&dquo; in their solution. The author notes the gross mishandling of the
Middle East area during and after World War I characterized by conflicting
promises to Arabs and Zionists by the Allies which eventually resulted in the
United Nations Partition Plan of 1947. The creation of the state of Israel was
realized; the Palestinian state envisioned in the Plan was stillborn and the succes-
sion of wars...