A Prince of Our Disorder

the long version

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, Harvard professor of psychiatry Dr. 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 Extensive interviews, far-flung correspondence, access to War Office dispatches and unpublished letters provide the basis for Mack’s sensitive investigation of the psychiatric dimensions of Lawrence’s personality.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.