In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as “the Setback.” Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967.

Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Michael B. Oren spotlights all the participants—Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American—that were involved in this earth-shaking clash. Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents and exclusive personal interviews, he recreates the regional and international context that, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration.

A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation.