by Ronald Florence.

Viking. 528 pages. $27.95.

BY EDWARD J. RENEHAN JR.

Special to the Journal.

Few Western names loom larger in the popular history of the Middle East than that of Thomas Edward (“T.E.”) Lawrence: the fabled “Lawrence of Arabia.”

The illegitimate son of a British baronet, Lawrence was made famous by his best-selling memoir The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (edited by his friend George Bernard Shaw and first published in the 1920s). The book chronicled Lawrence’s work as a liaison for British Military Intelligence recruiting Arab nationalists (among them Emir Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca) to embark upon guerrilla operations against the forces of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

Lawrence died in 1935 following a motorcycle crash. Thereafter, his fame was advanced through David Lean’s now-classic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole. Twenty-eight years later, a made-for-television movie starring Ralph Fiennes further perpetuated Lawrence’s memory.

In Lawrence and Aaronsohn, Providence historian Ronald Florence puts a new and interesting spin on the story by presenting the yin to Lawrence’s yang. The heretofore obscure Aaron Aaronsohn was a Jewish agronomist and ardent Zionist living and working in Palestine. Born in Romania, he’d immigrated to Palestine with his parents when he was a boy of 6.

Just as Lawrence worked for the British cause in cooperation with Arab nationalists, so did Aaronsohn recruit Jewish nationalists. Aaronsohn dropped out of his career as a scientist and — with the help of his sister Sarah, who wound up committing suicide after being tortured by the Turks — set up a spy network in Palestine that proved vital to the British war effort.

These two allies in war proved to be bitter rivals on every other front. Lawrence emerged from his alliance with Faisal as an ardent proponent of Arab nationalism. He considered the wandering Muslim Bedouin his brothers. He likewise came to view their nomadic lifestyle on the desert as a great and worthy archaic culture devoid of Western banalities. The agronomist Aaronsohn, on the other hand, envisioned a green and thriving Palestine: a land devoid of nomads and largely devoid of desert, a land molded and refined to nurture not only agriculture but a thriving Jewish nation-state.

In Cairo at the end of the war, and at the Versailles Peace Conference, each man worked tirelessly to swing British policy in the direction of his own unique vision for the region. Shortly thereafter, Aaronsohn died in an airplane crash.

Florence does a superb job of contrasting these two fascinating characters. The flamboyant, romantic Lawrence who was so attracted by the free life of tribal randomness seems the polar opposite of the methodical, scientific Aaronsohn who was so dedicated to the creation of a Jewish homeland. In crafting complex and absorbing portraits of his two protagonists, Florence has produced a singular and important book that does much to illuminate the roots of today’s debate over borders and birthrights in the troubled Middle East.