Fifteen Armies, Four Competing Explanations
Twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes is the figure that should shape every decision about this audiobook, and one reviewer arrived there ahead of me. JB Battle, whose four stars are the lowest grade in the pool, headed the notice "Loooong Read...be ready!" and followed it with the observation that the book "Tends to get long and redundant about the Conflicts". Nothing in that notice says which edition it describes. The objection transfers to a recording either way, and it gets worse there, because a listener cannot skim.
Scope is what generates the length. Pollack examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, running from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 through Hizballah in 2006 to the Iraqis and ISIS between 2014 and 2017. He then sets all of that against the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own twentieth-century operations. Six comparison cases stacked on top of fifteen primary ones.
Pollack's driving question is stated bluntly in the copy: since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight, losing wars they should by rights have won and managing only modest results even at their best. Four candidate explanations are laid out to be weighed against one another, namely Soviet military methods, civil-military relations across the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and behavior patterns drawn from the wider Arab culture. Isolating which of the four carries the weight is the job.
De Vries Signals Which Hypothesis Is Live
Michael Griswold's notice frames the book in the way that makes it work best in audio. Pollack, the review reports, sets out to establish why Arab militaries have performed so poorly in wars since 1945, and calls it a head-scratching question precisely because virtually every one of those militaries was allied to one of the two great powers, so neither firepower nor willing conscripts were the constraint. A book with a mystery at its center survives being heard considerably better than a survey does.
Justin Choi engages the thesis head-on and supplies the most useful line here for a prospective buyer, writing that "history has shown that armies are often a product of the country's culture" and adding that Pollack "is objective - neither praising or condemning the Arabs". On a subject where a cultural explanation could go very badly wrong, that is a reader stating specifically that it does not. Accept the argument or reject it; the register is being reported as analytical rather than polemical.
Christian D. Orr's five-star notice opens with a disclosure that deserves quoting rather than summarizing. The reviewer calls Pollack "My professional acquaintance" and identifies him as a current American Enterprise Institute scholar and former CIA analyst. That relationship does not invalidate the assessment, and putting it in the first clause was the right thing to do. It does mean the most detailed endorsement on this page comes from inside the author's own professional world, which a buyer should weigh accordingly.
David de Vries carries the reading, and the demand this text makes is a structural one. A comparative argument that cycles the same four hypotheses across fifteen armies needs the listener to know which hypothesis is currently on the table. In print a section heading does that job silently every few pages, and a reader's thumb can flick back to check. In a recording, pacing and chapter markers are the only signposts available, and across a listen this long the gap between following the argument and merely following the anecdotes rests on them.
Filed Under Africa, About the Middle East
Length is the caution everybody will feel, and it is the only thing anybody on this page complains about. Twenty-four and a quarter hours is roughly a month of daily commuting, and the phrase about the conflicts turning redundant points at a genuine structural risk: a book weighing fifteen armies across seven decades has to revisit similar ground repeatedly in order to compare anything. Redundancy is how a comparative argument proves itself. It is also how it wears a listener down.
Eddie's five-star notice, filed on the twenty-third of June 2019, predates this recording by a month and reports reading 250 pages in the first two days. That is a print reader, and the detail is an asset rather than a defect, because it tells you the prose moves at speed. What it cannot speak to is the recording, and neither can the report that the writing "makes the book difficult to put down", which is a property belonging squarely to pages.
Filing deserves a flag. This listing carries a single tag reading Africa for a history whose named cases are drawn, in the publisher's own words, from virtually every Middle Eastern war. Not one African conflict appears among them; the comparison set does include Chad, which may well be where the tag originated. A listener browsing African history will find a book that is overwhelmingly about the Middle East, and the genre field says history and nothing further.
Pollack's Puzzle Beats Any Battle Chronicle
Serious readers of military history are the target and will need no persuading. The comparative method, the size of the evidence base and the willingness to test four explanations against each other rather than assert one from the start are exactly what that audience is looking for. One hundred and thirty-four ratings producing a 4.6 is also a base broad enough to actually mean something, which is rarer on listings like this one than it ought to be.
General readers with an interest in the region can start here without difficulty, provided they understand the shape of the commitment. More than one reviewer describes the prose as clear and well made, and the mystery framing gives a non-specialist something firm to hold onto across a very long stretch. Budget the commitment honestly, though, because this is not a book anybody finishes over a weekend of driving.
One group should genuinely hesitate: anybody expecting a narrative history of Middle Eastern wars. This is an argument that uses wars as evidence rather than a chronicle that tells their stories, and at this length that difference is enormous. Come for the question and the answer will hold you the whole way; come for the campaigns and the repetition will win.
In Brief
- Voice: David de Vries reads a comparative argument cycling four hypotheses across fifteen armies, so tracking which one is live falls to pacing and chapter markers.
- Big ideas: Arab military effectiveness since 1948, culture against doctrine, comparative case-study method.
- Atmosphere: Rigorous, patient, argumentative.
- Worth it?: Outstanding for readers who want a thesis tested rather than asserted, punishing for anyone hoping to be told war stories.
How long is the Armies of Sand audiobook and does the length hurt it?
Twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes, which is close to a month of daily commuting. The only four-star reviewer warns that the book grows long and redundant about the conflicts. That risk is real in any format and sharper in audio, where skimming a familiar passage is not an option.
Which armies does Kenneth Pollack actually examine?
Fifteen Arab armies and air forces across virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS between 2014 and 2017. Six non-Arab forces are used for comparison: Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean and South Vietnamese.
Is the book's cultural argument handled fairly?
One reviewer addresses this directly, describing Pollack as objective and neither praising nor condemning the Arabs, and noting that the book treats culture as one of several tested explanations rather than a foregone conclusion. The other three candidate explanations weighed are Soviet doctrine, civil-military relations and state underdevelopment.
Do the reviews describe this audiobook or the printed edition?
At least one clearly describes print: it was filed a month before the July 2019 recording and mentions reading 250 pages in two days. The remaining four postdate the release but none of them names a format at all, so treat the whole pool as commentary on the book's argument and judge the reading from a sample.
