How the New Middle East Was Made with Simon Sebag Montefiore

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Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with one of the foremost historians of our time, Simon Sebag Montefiore. As I write this, his work has never felt more urgent. “We’re in a new world of counterhistory,” he said recently. “A new world of counterhistory where neither historical facts nor present-time facts matter if they don’t fit the ideological orthodoxy.” It is “our responsibility as historians,” he said, “to stand up and be unafraid to contradict conventional wisdom, surging conspiracies, witch hunts, purity tests, pile-ons that are used to crush debate . . . and to say persuasively, ‘This is what happened.’ ” And that is what he does in his brilliant new book, The Cauldron:…