Lawrence of Arabia has near mythic status in our world 100+ years after his adventures. In some respects, it reflects on the current Mideast situation and what is so foreign to western culture… clans, tribes, blood feuds. The struggle for power is unchanged and our own inept understanding plagues the world order where religion and relationship are more central. I found the writing sometimes a struggle on what has a diary like character. The story is worth knowing, but some effort is needed to finish the saga.Please note, the 5 stars are for Lawrence's book, not the publisher, which I will get to in a second.Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a challenging read, but like so many challenges, the reward is made greater through the difficulty of the test. Lawrence's language and syntax are unfamiliar to the modern reader, but it is beautiful in its descriptions of the desert and Lawrence's life in the Arab Revolt in WWI. The book was written from memory after his previous version, written from his war journal, was lost on a train journey. He had destroyed the journal after completion of his first version, so the fact that all of this was done by sheer recollection is amazing. The amount of detail is more than most readers will need, and that is one of the great challenges of the book, along with the sometimes confusing word choice and sentence structures. But, many of the passages that recall his experiences of desert life among the Arabs are as well written as anything in the English language. Seven Pillars also gives some insight into the complex mind of Lawrence: his self loathing, insecurities, sexual oddities, hatred of his physical body, and simultaneous love and disgust with the Arab people. It is a fascinating glimpse into a mind that was struggling to understand itself and its place in the world. For those who complete the journey with Lawrence, the reward will be much more than a deeper understanding of WWI military history.If Lawrence's writing was not challenging enough, the typographical errors in the edition I read make some passages incomprehensible. BN Publishing should be ashamed to put their name on a book that has so many errors in it. From what I gather, this is an optical scan of another text, done by a computer, and published under the BN name. However, the scan was obviously not edited by a human afterwards. A common mistake by the computer optics is to read the letters "rn" in a word as "m". Instead of a scout returning to camp to "warn" the others, he comes back to "wam". You can imagine the hilarity that ensues as you attempt to read a passage several times, believing that Lawrence's vast vocabulary has gotten the better of you once again, only to finally pick out where the software made a mistake. Just this morning, I was rereading a passage from Book X that I was never able to discern. It reads "Our mobile column of airplanes, armored cars, Arab Regulars and Bedouin collected at Azrak. We determined to rot all through railways leading out of Deraa. The southern line we rot near Mafrak..." For the life of me, I don't know what "rot" means in these sentences. Unfortunately, those types of errors are common throughout the 400,000 word text. For this reason, I cannot recommend the BN Publishing version of this book. If there was a hardcover, human-edited, unabridged text I would pay a pretty penny for it, but this seems to be the only one on the market. Stear clear of the BN Publishing edition at all costs! I hope you can find a great version of this wonderful book and will treasure it as much as I do.As there are plenty of reviews describing the content (which is amazing) the purpose of this review is (obviously) not to duplicate those efforts, but to warn and advise about the quality (or lack thereof) of many of the editions recently put out, including the one that I got.Several recommendations: If you are not already familiar with T.E. Lawrence, first read the recent biography "Hero: The Life and Legend.." by Michael Korda. That will initiate the reader into Lawrence's world, and that book is well published and edited, and contains several maps and a good number of photographs. From "Hero" you will learn just how much effort Lawrence put into the writing of his story of the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, including plans for very limited publishing and exacting standards of paper type, maps included, etc.The above recommedation is critical if you are reading reviews to decide about purchasing one of the very sub-par recent editions of Lawrence's own publication "Seven Pillars of Wisdom." As stated in many of these reviews (check out the 1-star reviews), there are many horrible, terrible, very bad editions of "Seven Pillars," by which Lawrence would be understandably outraged. The edition I got is one example: paperback ISBN 978-1-61720-183-7, 2011 Wilder Publications, 548 pages. I think the publisher says that it is "green" and only prints the book as it is ordered, and as the date on the back page of mine says 03 November 2011, that seems likely. What a crying shame that the 'green' publisher could not also take the time to correct all of the obvious typos - the vast majority of which seem to be errors from scanned material that was not correctly OCR-d and proofed.That being said, if you have read "Hero" you need to decide how bothered you will be by mistakes in the book as you read. If you can be tolerent then you don't have to be choosy about the publisher/edition you get, because even with the horrible one, you will have the background to be able to overlook the errors (I tried pretending that the mistakes made it more like reading the original notes, rather than the written, revised, lost, rewritten, agonized over and carefully published manuscript that it was.)If you know that you will be interested and you like to keep books that you care about, you will want to track down better editions - maybe online will not be the best way to shop for it since there are so many.T.E Lawrence has wonderful powers of description and you must read this book some time in your lifetime. However, don't buy this edition. It seems to have been produced using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan and digitise an old print version, and is absolutely full of typos. Sometimes these are easy to recognise "lie" becomes "Me" and the city of "Homs" becomes "Horns", but in other places they completely muck up the text and make it indecipherable. The last quarter of the book is the worst. Did the proof reader give up? Who knows. Classic book, but buy a different version.I decided to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom after reading Michael Korda's excellent biography on T. E. Lawrence, in order to put some flesh on the bones, so to speak. I have no intention of attempting a scholarly review as any attempt at an analysis of the man, the history of events and the politics of the region require more insightful discussion than there is space for. Nevertheless, here are my thoughts.For me, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is essentially three books in one. Firstly, it is Lawrence's own indepth self anaylsis of his role in the Arab Revolt. However, this is by no means a superficial assessment but probes his own motives and judgements. And at times these reflections border on philosophical thinking and require two or three readings to fully appreciate what he is trying to reveal. In addition, it must be remembered that Lawrence was a Oxford scholar in Edwardian England and some of the vocabulary can be a bit flowery at times. But the time spent mulling over his words eventually brings rich rewards.Secondly, it is a travelog. Lawrence's descriptions of The Arab tribes,the region and its weather place you directly in the eye of the storm ( excuse the pun). I had to keep reminding myself throughout the book that essentially Lawrence would be perceived as a bit of a geek in modern society. Yet here was this essentially bookish academic who not only travelled to a hostile region of the world, but then ingratiated himself within a totally alien culture and then played a significant role in motivating them to attack the occupying Turks. Finally, it is a book about war. As Lawrence said, " the Arab Revolt was a sideshow of a sideshow", nevertheless this does not detract from the mans achievements. What Lawrence achieved pioneered many military strategies for years to come. His daring style of guerilla warfare inspired Col. David Stirling to form the S.A.S. in W.W.2. And sadly his style of using explosives can still be seen in the Middle East today. But it is his descriptions of battle that will remain with me. In contrast to his almost poetic prose of the landscape and The Arabs his descriptions of battles are stark and brutal and leave no imagery uncompromised.I have come away from Seven Pillars of Wisdom full of admiration for this amazing man and his achievements. So forget the film (as good as it is) and curl up with this book. It will take you on a journey with an unbelievable cast of characters to a land and time in history where you will have to pinch yourself to believe it ever happened. But I guarantee it will be the star of the story that will stay in your mind. Col. T.E.Lawrence.The only criticism I can level at this book is that there are rather a lot of textual errors that slipped in in the editing or the printing. Other than that I was so surprised as I had always refrained from reading this book as I expected it to be very heavy going. In fact it is quite the opposite. It is a wonderful read from a wonderful man. He 'meet[s] with Triumph and Disaster and treats them just the same' [Rudyard Kipling], he was a great man, fully aware of his his thoughts and feelings, and he knew where feelings belonged but didn't deny them. He is honest and has integrity and allows us into his human mind. This book allows a rare insight into a very special and important person. It also provides a rare and honest insight into the mentality of the nationals he deals with: Arab, Turk, Indian, German, Australian and even British, the camels too! His descriptive writing is second to none: he makes the desert come alive in all its colours, weathers, seasons, geologies etc. I have now read it twice and will read it again, soon, as it is such a pleasure to read: frequently, as I am reading, I will re-read paragraphs and sentences just for the pure joy of the English Language. I have seen a derogatory comment regarding the vocabulary: rather than decrying the author's extensive knowledge and displaying his own ignorance the commenter should take the opportunity to use a dictionary and educate himself. BTW I was surprised at just how much of the book was in the Peter O'Toole film. I admire the file even more now. I am old now, and very little brings me any joy, but reading this certainly does.I found the structure of this book felt very unnatural, presumably because the author was constantly on the move whilst writing it and subsequently due to his having to rewrite it from memory after the original was lost.The names are difficult to keep track of but the characters are beautifully described in words, deeds and sketches.The portraits are some of the best bits in the book they're so sensitively and beautifully drawn.This book is a fascinating insight into our modern difficulties in the middle east. It explains the deep and abiding mistrust the Arabs feel towards the allied countries who stirred up the revolt for their own purposes then left an infant government to get on with it.Currently the events described in this book are in the process of being deemed untrustworthy by some modern analysts whose purpose in so doing is unclear, but suspicious.I shall now have to do some further research of these historical events to find my own conceptual truth.I thoroughly enjoyed this; you might not; Lawrence's style is hard to characterise — at once familiar and archaising. I have no doubt it is the greatest piece of military writing since Cæsar, yet not so crisp in narrative. You’ll need to remember a host of Arab names, trying to recall their histories and affinities — a task complicated by the fact the text is badly scanned in places: Ah' = Ali, Urm = Um, Bebergh = Rebergh... and a better grasp than I possess of Middle Eastern topography would be a help. But it opens up a whole world, full of often moving stories — I cried at the deaths of Daud and Farraj, and long for a camel of my own.