In January 1999, a newswire shocked Jordan. King Hussein announced that it was not his brother Hassan that would succeed him, but his son Abdullah. Less than a week later, King Hussein was dead.
During his forty-six-year reign, the Hashemite king preserved his kingdom against rising Islamism and maintained its neutrality in the face of the conflicting interests of neighboring countries. Hussein left his son a stable kingdom, allied to the West. Today, King Abdullah is following in his father's footsteps, positioning himself as a peace broker alongside the United States in the hopes of ending the sixty-year Middle East conflict.
Award-winning journalist Randa Habib draws on twenty-five years of unparalleled access to the former king to share unique insights into Hussein's relations with Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, and Itzhak Rabin. A lively chronicle of the end of an era, this is also a fascinating account of twenty-first-century Jordan, the Jordan of King Abdullah and Queen Rania.
Randa Habib has been director of the Amman bureau of Agence France Presse since 1987, and she has reported extensively from Iraq and other areas of conflict. Habib was the first journalist to interview King Abdullah when he ascended the throne.