Lowell Thomas - With Lawrence in Arabia

Copyright 1924 by Lowell Thomas

Foreword Copyright 2017 by Mitchell Stephens

First Skyhorse Publishing edition Copyright 2017

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: Lowell Thomas

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1572-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1573-8

Printed in the United States of America.

To Eighteen Gentlemen of Chicago
this narrative of the adventures
of a modern Arabian knight
is gratefully dedicated

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE 2017 EDITION

T he Explorers Club is pleased to be reprinting With Lawrence in Arabia as part of our classic series. First published in the 1920s, this book, with its unique historical significance, is as exciting now as it was then. We are proud to add it to our collection.

We want to thank Mitchell Stephens, Lowell Thomass biographer, who has contributed a new introduction for this edition. Ted Janulis, President of the Explorers Club, has added comments about Lowell Thomas and his relationship to the Explorers Club.

A sincere thank you goes to the Lowell Thomas family for granting us permission to reprint With Lawrence in Arabia and for graciously donating the proceeds from the sale of this book to the Lowell Thomas Capital Building Fund. This fund was established in honor of Lowell Thomas, for whom our headquarters building in New York is named.

A special thanks goes to Anne Donaghy, the daughter of Lowell Thomas, Jr.; Executive Director of the club, Will Roseman; Curator of Collections, Lacey Flint; George Gowen; Leslie Steinau; and Veronica Alvarado.

Jay Cassell and Skyhorse Publishing continue to collaborate with the Explorers Club in this venture and understand our commitment to republishing outstanding books in the field of exploration.

Lindley Kirksey Young The Explorers Club 2017

INTRODUCTION:

LOWELL THOMAS AND THE BUILDING THAT BEARS HIS NAME

O n East 70th Street in New York City, between Central Park and Park Avenue, you can see a stately Jacobean townhouse with a plaque on its facade, engraved with the words The Explorers Club. This five-story mansion house was built in 1910 by art collector Stephen Clark, who donated much of his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. Today if you venture inside the building, youll find yourself surrounded by a kaleidoscope of artifacts: photos of Buzz Aldrin on the moon and the bathyscaphe Trieste, which ventured for the first time to the deepest part of the ocean in 1960; Matthew Hensons North Pole gloves, along with some leftover provisions from that remarkable journey; the globe around which Thor Heyerdahl planned his epic Kon-Tiki voyage; the beams from the 1828 British warship HMS Daedalus; and Tudor-rose windows from Windsor Castle.

If you then ascend the main staircase of the town-houseperhaps to see a film, attend a lecture, or take part in a seminar on the second flooryou will be greeted at the first landing by a bust of Lowell Thomas, for whom our headquarters building is now named in recognition, honoring his critical role in its acquisition from the Clark family. This central positioning is altogether fitting and proper, as Thomas embodied the spirit, mission, and soul of the Explorers Clubto not only explore the worlds around, below, and above us, but to interpret and communicate that newfound knowledge with those back home. This extraordinary man and exquisite storyteller not only had a thirst to learn about our planets people, cultures, and creatures, he made these adventures accessible and alluring to vast audiences who are thrilled to follow in Thomass footsteps and hear his remarkable tales.

One of Thomass most notable discoveries, of course, was T. E. Lawrence. And if you believe that all the great discoveries have been made, that the days of fresh adventure are behind us, please pay close attention to how unexpected the paths and accomplishments of these two men were to their contemporaries. Inspiration for us all!

Each year, the Explorers Club hosts the Lowell Thomas Awards Dinner in honor of men and women who have achieved excellence in exploration. Many of todays explorations are under the ocean, in space, in the laboratory, and involving our changing environment.

Ted Janulis President of the Explorers Club 2017

INTRODUCTION TO THE 2017 EDITION

BY MITCHELL STEPHENS

T he legendary story of Lawrence of Arabia has now been told in more than a hundred books. Lowell Thomass With Lawrence in Arabia , published initially in 1924, was the first.

With Lawrence in Arabia shares a weakness with just about all those other books about T. E. Lawrence and his adventures in Arabia during the First World War: it underplays Thomass own role in bringing Lawrence to public attention and creating the legend that came to surround his activities during the war. Some biographies of Lawrence scrub Lowell Thomas entirely or almost entirely from the story. And this is an oversight that transcends the written word: David Leans Academy Award-winning 1962 movie, Lawrence of Arabia , restricts itself to glimpses of a gruff reporter, though Leans producer had purchased the rights to Thomass book.

Lowell Thomas, who in fact was not gruff but charming, was the only journalist who actually spent time with T. E. Lawrence in Arabia. Along with the cameraman who accompanied him, Harry A. Chase, Thomas rode camels through the Arabian Desert with Lawrence and Shereef Feisal, leader of the Arab Revolt. He secured firsthand, contemporary accounts of the fighting from many of the principals. He squatted in their tents, ate their food, observed them on their camels and horses, jotted down their accounts of dynamiting trains, and transcribed their own analysesLawrences in particularof the past and future of the Middle East.

The book Lowell Thomas wrote about Lawrence and the Arab Revolt appeared in dozens of editions in a number of languages. Nonetheless, despite possessing the right of primogeniture, despite its thoroughness and success, this book cannot fairly claim to have made Lawrence famous. He was already famousthanks to Thomass show, With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia .

That multi-media showwhich Thomas brought to London when he was twenty-sevenwas the largest triumph so far in what had already been a remarkable, if unfocused, life. Thomas, raised in a gold-rush town in Colorado, had secured two bachelors and one masters degree by the time he was twenty-one. Then he made his way to Chicago to work as a reporter and attend law school and was quickly invited to teach a class in public speaking at that law school. He traveled to Alaska and soon was giving illustrated lectures on Alaska. He enrolled in graduate school at Princeton and after a year was invited to join the faculty.