Synopsis
We all focus on recent events while losing track of how they developed.In mid-2013, something was decidedly wrong with our policy in the Middle East. And Russia. The Administration was lying about Benghazi. It was condoning the Muslim Brotherhood, befriending Iran’s new President, letting the Iraqi Kurds down, snubbing Israel and Saudi Arabia, chastising the new Egyptian leader, and ineptly watching the Syrian genocide. All while allowing for a power vacuum, knowing full well it would be filled by al-Qaeda, or worse, by Russia.

To anyone who thinks the Cold War ended in the Eighties, and that Russia’s buck stops in the barren lands of the Middle East, think twice.Trashing decades of history, President Obama had apparently decided to revisit the Truman Doctrine, and it came down to simple questions. Who was he, who were his advisors, and what was the motivation?

We were in mid-2014 and the stage was set for Russia’s next move.Why was a difficult question. How we got there is what you are about to read in Between Obama’s Lines: How We Almost Lost The Middle East, The Cold War, and The Atlantic Alliance by Franck Prissert.

Critique
Keenly analytical, impressively insightful, and thoroughly “reader friendly” in organization and presentation, Between Obama’s Lines by Franck Prissert is a seminal and groundbreaking political/historical study of the Obama administration and the world events (and America’s involvement) that occurred during the Barack Obama presidency.

The book is informatively enhanced with maps, tables, thirty-six pages of Notes, and a twenty-page Index. Particularly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Political Science collections. Also available in paperback and digital formats.

Editorial Note
Franck Prissert is an independent author with more than forty years of experience on Wall Street. A former U.S. private banker based in Europe, he was present during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and closely observed the major geopolitical shifts that followed. Drawing on extensive research with hundreds of sourced references, Prissert examines the evolution of Russian strategy, the concept of a Russo-Islamic Alliance, and changes in U.S. Middle East policy during the Obama administration and their implications for the Atlantic Alliance.

Jim Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review