Over the course of six days in June, 1967, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and Defense Force (IDF) fought and defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The Israelis destroyed 85 percent of Egypt's military equipment, hundreds of Jordanian and Syrian tanks, and inflicted a total of between 15,000 and 20,000 casualties, all at a cost of 800 killed, 2,500 wounded, and 36 downed planes. When both sides finally agreed to a cease-fire, Israel was three times larger than when the fighting started, and it controlled Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Jordan's West Bank, and Syria's Golan Heights.
Arabs still refer to what Israel's Yitzhak Rabin dubbed "the Six-Day War" as "The Setback" and "The Disaster." Other Israelis suggested names as diverse as "the War of Salvation" and "the War of the Sons of Light." Whatever you choose to call them, the six days from June 5 -10 1967 dictated the next 40 years of Middle Eastern history. West Bank settlements, Yasser Arafat, Black September, the 1973 Yom Kippur War - all of them have roots in the Six-Day War.
Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East traces its origins, conduct, and results in a detailed, well-researched, if somewhat academic volume. As a testament to Oren's exhaustive research, the book features 91 pages of end-notes and bibliographic entries.
Oren begins with an overview of Israel's formation, the 1956 Suez Crisis (when Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal), and events running up to the summer of 1967, then chronicles the war as it developed from hour to hour. One of the benefits of the Six-Day War's brief length (as subject matter) is that Oren is able to explore politicking, strategizing, and combat in equal measure. He devotes special attention, for example, to the United States' and Soviet Union's maneuvering in the UN Security Council, as both superpowers fought to maintain their influence in the Middle East while avoiding direct military intervention.
In the midst of the exhaustive detail, however, Oren still manages to highlight quirky episodes that breathe life into the dense history. On Day One, for example, he describes how the head of Egypt's military, Field Marshal 'Amer (who was airborne when the IAF launched devastating attacks on Egypt's air bases), could not find an undamaged field on which to land. Forced to touch down at Cairo International Airport, 'Amer and his staff were met on the tarmac by a group of officers who accused them of plotting a coup against President Nasser. Both groups drew pistols, and a gun-battle was only narrowly averted when a subordinate informed them that the Israelis were attacking.
Later, on Day Three, after Israeli paratroopers secured Jerusalem, neither their commander, Mordechai Gur, nor any of his staff officers could locate the sacred Western Wall until they asked an elderly Arab man for directions.
It is Oren's inclusion of these sometimes shocking, sometimes comic moments that elevates Six Days of War beyond stale academia, and they are complemented by a compelling cast of characters - especially Jordan's King Hussein, who Nasser and the Syrians browbeat into a war he doesn't particularly want, and who nearly loses his kingdom in the bargain.
If you have any interest in military history or the Middle East (or, better yet, want to learn) Six Days of War comes highly recommended.
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