On July 26th, 1956, Gammel Abd al-Nasser, the Egyptian president, nationalized the Suez Canal, thereby starting a tumultuous chain of events which would shape U.S. foreign policy in the region until the end of the Cold War and beyond. The take over of the canal zone and the subsequent military action of Britain, France, and Israel to take it back three months later were not only the results of bellicose Anglo-French policies, but of the ineptitude of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration, especially the State Department headed by John Foster Dulles. The United States government failed to successfully resolve the situation in order to stem the tidal wave of Anti-Western sentiment washing over the Arab states in the Middle East. Nasser, Eisenhower, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden all played extremely important roles in the complex series of events that lead up to and unfolded during the Suez Crisis. It...