Power, faith, and fantasy : America in the Middle East, 1776 to the present / Michael B. Oren ; [with a new afterword].

Chronology -- Prologue: A passage to glory -- Introduction: Recovering a pivotal past -- Pt. 1: Early America encounters the Middle East. A mortal and mortifying threat ; The hostile and ethereal Orient ; A crucible of American identity ; Illuminating and emancipating the world -- Pt. 2: The Middle East and antebellum America. Confluence and conflict ; Manifest Middle Eastern destiny ; Under American eyes -- Pt. 3: The Civil War and Reconstruction. Fission ; Rebs and Yanks on the Nile ; The trumpet that never calls retreat ; American onslaught ; Resurgence -- Pt. 4: The age of imperialism. Empires at dawn ; Imperial piety ; Imperial myths ; A region renamed and reordered -- Pt. 5: America, the Middle East, and the Great War. Spectators of catastrophe ; Action or nonaction? ; An American movement is born ; Arise, o Arabs, and awake! ; The first Middle East peace process ; Fantasies revived -- Pt. 6: Oil, war, and ascendancy. From Bibles to drill bits ; An insoluble conflict evolves ; A torch for the Middle East ; The Middle East and the man from Missouri -- Pt. 7: In search of Pax Americana. Harmony and hegemony ; The thirty years' war -- Epilogue: A profound and visceral gratitude.