A Review of Thomas W. Lippman, "Hero of the Crossing: How Anwar Sadat and the 1973 War Changed the World"

Anwar Sadat, Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoirs, initially appeared to him as nothing more than ‘a political clown.’ This was neither the first nor the last time the Egyptian President had been referred to disparagingly. Such opinions accompanied Sadat throughout his political life as one of the Free Officers working in the shadow of Gamal Abdel Nasser and, following Nasser’s death, as Egypt’s second President. They have even endured long after his October 1981 assassination. But how did a man that Egyptians referred to as a nukta, or a joke, manage to succeed Gamal Abdel Nasser after his death in September 1970, to spearhead the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, to move Egypt away from the Soviet sphere of influence, and to re-align the country’s economic and foreign policies with the United States? How did Sadat achieve the unthinkable by negotiating, and concluding, a peace treaty with Israel? The constant tension between expectations and reality, or between moments of apparent triumph and despair, form the basis of Thomas W. Lippman’s recent book on the Hero of the Crossing, the name Anwar Sadat fashioned for himself following the Egyptians’ crossing of the Suez Canal during the 1973 military operations.