VIDEO: Karl Meyer’s Seen it All Before in the Middle East

Last Tuesday night, former World Policy Journal editor Karl Meyer spoke to a small group of friends and colleagues gathered in a conference room at the HSBC tower in midtown Manhattan to celebrate the publication of Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East, which he co-wrote with his wife (and “indispensible executive producer and superego”), Shareen Blair Brysac, who quipped that she’s hoping for a review that says “this is the book George W. Bush should have read before he went into Iraq.”

To that end, in this video clip, Meyer jocularly explains why he hasn’t really brought anything new to the subject—the patterns have all been there for anybody willing to take a careful look. You might need to turn the sound up on this one; I was taping from a distance and without amplification.

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