How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less: Without Leaving Your Apartment Book

When Levey, a former English speechwriter for Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, returned to the U.S. and began to promote his first book, Shut Up, I'm Talking, he was deluged with suggestions for solving the conflict. Everyone on this side of the Atlantic seemed to think that they had the solution to the problem—and that, if they were only given the proper resources and about six months, they could fix the seemingly intractable conflict that has plagued the Middle East for sixty years. So Gregory set out on a quixotic, and surprisingly illuminating, quest to make peace himself.

Drawing on his broad base of contacts—former White House officials, a few former U.S. presidents, lobbyists, former spies, pro-Israel bigwigs, generals and representatives of the PLO, as well as armchair generals, the Palestinian grocer on his street corner, and dozens of Jewish grandmothers—Levey attempts to find out why the Middle East problem refuses to be resolved—and also why so many people who live a world away from the Middle East are so eager to try their hand at policymaking.