Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President Paperback – November 25, 2008 by Richard N. Haass (Author), Martin S. Indyk (Author) (Brookings Institution Press)

I write this review in late Oct. 2016; this book was published about eight years ago as a guide to the next president (who'd turn out to be Obama) as to what our middle east policies should be. The seven articles covering almost all of the problems in that region are written by experts all of whom have long records in government, academic and/or think tanks. The principal authors, Ambassadors Haass and Indyk, are the "principal authors" but actually wrote only one of the seven chapters. The book predates many of the momentous events that have occurred in the eight years succeeding its publication including the deposal of Mubarak and Morsi; the deposal of Khadaffi; the Syrian civil war and the accompanying Russian intervention; the emergence of (the then unknown) ISIS, the knife infitada in Israel, the civil war in Yemen, the Iran Deal...and more. So as you can see so much has happened since the book came out that what is fascinating is to measure the authors' analyses and recommendations against what we, America, have done in the tempestuous eight years since.

This is a valuable book for anyone seriously interested in the issues it deals with. It is not however a particularly easy-to-read book at all....it is written by people who are not journalists and who, although most have in fact written other books on the middle east, are not particularly felicitous writers. Which is to say it is a slow-going book with several chapters (Iran especially) being very dry and academic in style. You will have to put in time and effort to read it..these authors are not Thomas Friedmans or Robert Kaplans insofar as their writing styles.

I purposely am not going into an exegesis of my own opinion of their numerous opinions and recommendations except to write now that our country has followed some of those recommendations and the middle east is infinitely WORSE than it was eight years ago when they wrote this "here's what we should do" book. Obviously I do not find myself in agreement with many (but I am in with some) of their views.

Judge for yourself. The book is worth the time and effort if you want to put it in.