Eve of Destruction

I read the Eve of Destruction by Howard Blum the day before yesterday instead of working on my appellate brief. It was kind of a let down. I was expecting something around the quality of Six Days of War. This was no where close, but it still was a good read. There was some good information about the arrogance of the Israeli Government, but it didn't go into the effects of the war of attrition on building that arrogance, on the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, worries about the nuclear reactor, or on the Israeli public's feeling at the time. Also there was almost nothing about Egypt. It didn't talk about the break up of the UAR (I might be wrong about whether or not that had happened yet, but if it hadn't it wasn't as strong as it was during Nasser's time), the death of Nasser, their relationship with the Soviets, the impact of the Six Day War (I know it's supposed to be called something else but I can't remember what), the impact of the war of attrition, or what the other movers and shakers in the region were doing at the time. Most importantly it didn't talk at all about the Palestinians.
So that's what it lacked. My other complaints revolve around some assumptions Blum made about whether or not the "InLaw" was a double agent. I feel more and more that history is succumbing to the "Dutch" effect. I don't generally care to much about the authors unsubstantiated guesses, and if you're going to put some speculation in it should be labeled as such right off the bat. The most annoying thing about the book was it tried to tie one character from the Yom Kippur war into the current intifada, but it didn't really create any link at all, and he didn't really offer any support or development to the part so it fell flat and seemed like pure speculation.
The best part of it was that it did a decent job of illustrating a few of the major personalities. The Egyptian General Shazly got good treatment, and I didn't know about him so it was interesting. More could have been said about Sadat and Ismail to kind of set the political landscape and explain Egyptian motivation and obstacles. Moshe Dayan's personality seemed to get fair treatment too.
I think the biggest problem I had reading this book was that my expectations were so high from having read Six Days of War. I wanted that same kind of depth. That's a tall order. Anyway if you know nothing about the War of Yom Kippur I would skip this book until you get a good foundation and can weed some of the crap out as you read it.