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A Prince of Our Disorder

A Prince of Our Disorder

The Life of T. E. Lawrence

John E. Mack

ISBN 9780674704947

Publication date: 04/01/1998

When this Pulitzer Prize–winning biography first appeared in 1976, it rescued T.E. Lawrence from the mythologizing that had seemed to be his fate. In it, John Mack humanely and objectively explores the relationship between Lawrence’s inner life and his historically significant actions.

Extensive interviews, far-flung correspondence, access to War Office dispatches and unpublished letters provide the basis for Mack’s sensitive investigation of the psychiatric dimensions of Lawrence’s personality. In addition, Mack examines the pertinent history, politics, and sociology of the time in order to weigh the real forces with which Lawrence contended and which impinged upon him.

Praise

  • A hugely admired, and Pulitzer Prize–winning, biography which concentrates on the relationship between Lawrence’s inner life and the actions and events which grew out of them. It is easy to warm to a biographer who, while drawing on his training as a psychiatrist, is never deceived into thinking that theory can ‘explain’ his Lawrence. The more Mack discovered about the social contexts of Lawrence’s actions and the demands on a public man, the more he understood Lawrence’s psychology. The result is a resounding confirmation of this approach to his subject.

    —Desmond Christy, The Guardian

Author

  • John Mack, M.D., was Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director of the Center for Psychology and Social Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Book Details

  • 624 pages
  • 5 x 7-3/4 inches
  • Harvard University Press

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